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Clatter.

Kim Si-Hun\'s trembling hand dropped the sword. His body was soaked with cold sweat, and he was breathing heavily.

"Shit."

Si-Hun reached down to grab the practice sword he\'d dropped. Just doing that was so exhausting that cold sweat drenched his body like rain.

“Haaa, haaa.”

It felt like he was trying to force his way through a blocked passage.

Si-Hun bit his lip tensely and raised the sword.

Clatter.

The sword fell from his hand again, and the clear sound of steel hitting the floor echoed through the room.

"Shit, shit…!"

He slumped onto the floor. He felt like he was going to cry.

Si-Hun looked at his trembling hands. They were his hands, but they did not feel like it at all.

"I\'m sorry for giving…" a voice rang out in his mind.

It was something his mother had said, but it didn\'t sound like her voice anymore. Rather…

"Become stronger, and…"

Si-Hun recalled the red demon mask and that mocking voice full of contempt and ridicule. The voice that rang in his mind was closer to that of Satan than his mother.

"Shut… up."

Si-Hun frowned and stood up. He reached down for the sword again. He clenched his teeth so hard that blood poured out of his mouth.

Then he raised his sword.

Clatter.

The sword fell to the ground again.

* * *

"Protector Kim Si-Hun…"

Gaia anxiously watched over Si-Hun in the Hall of Protection\'s training room as he trained to hold a sword. She couldn\'t see him, but she could sense how desperate he was.

"I-Is it really okay for us to do nothing?" Gaia asked Kang-Woo with a trembling voice.

"We have to wait," Kang-Woo replied.

"But…"

"If we don\'t trust Si-Hun, who will?"

"We could at least console—"

"No." Kang-Woo shook his head. "Meaningless sympathy will only make Si-Hun suffer."

"…"

"We have to trust Si-Hun and wait."

"...Okay," Gaia said in a weak voice.

Si-Hun had lost both arms after being injured by Mammon, a prince of Hell.

"Protector Kim Si-Hun…" Gaia murmured while biting her lip.

In reality, losing both arms wasn\'t a problem. Through the birth of Players, injuries that were untreatable through current medical technology had become treatable.

Si-Hun had regained his two arms thanks to Kang-Woo, but the problem was that his brain still thought that he had lost his arms. His brain still remembered the pain from when Mammon\'s flames had burned off both of his arms.

He\'d lost so much sensation in his hands that he even struggled to hold a spoon.

"Urgh, sniff."

Gaia burst into tears as she was unable to handle the overwhelming sorrow she felt regarding Si-Hun\'s situation.

Si-Hun had stuck himself in the training room for days without sleep. Even though he had a superhuman body, it wasn\'t hard to imagine how hard it was to train continuously without any breaks.

"It\'s okay." Kang-Woo held Gaia\'s shoulder while she cried. "Si-Hun will definitely get through this."

Kang-Woo turned his head and looked at the training room. Si-Hun was drenched in sweat as he desperately tried to pick up the sword.

A smile appeared on Kang-Woo\'s face.

\'Of course, he\'ll get through it. Who do you think Si-Hun is?\'

It wasn\'t just because Si-Hun looked like a protagonist or a hero, or because he had been chosen by a god.

\'That guy doesn\'t know when to give up.\'

Kang-Woo remembered Si-Hun\'s battles against Halphas and Mammon. They had been enemies that Si-Hun had had no chance of winning against. His life had been at risk, but he hadn\'t run away.

It wasn\'t that he didn\'t know fear.

\'It\'s because his willpower far surpasses his fear.\'

Kang-Woo could instinctively tell that Si-Hun was going to overcome this adversity.

\'And…\'

He would become stronger as a result.

Kang-Woo looked at Si-Hun with an expectant gaze.

The beginning of their relationship hadn\'t been good. At first, he complained about the guy looking like a protagonist and obtaining strength without making much effort. However, after spending time with Si-Hun, Kang-Woo\'s opinion of Si-Hun changed.

\'To think that I would think of him as a little brother…\'

Kang-Woo had ended up getting attached to the person he had only thought of as a tool; it was like he was in some 80\'s spy film.

He smiled bitterly.

"Ah," Gaia uttered right then.

Kang-Woo turned toward her and asked, "What\'s wrong?"

"A-A revelation… No, I\'m not sure if I should call this a revelation, but… I heard the voice of… a god who is not Lady Gaia."

"Another god?"

"I\'m not sure who it is either, but they seem to be… very close to Lady Gaia."

"What did they say?"

Gaia said carefully, "A god from another world… is coming here."

* * *

There was a slender woman with long, brown hair lying on a large altar in a temple, which was atop the clouds and covered in an intense light.

A man with rough hair like a lion\'s mane approached the woman, who was breathing faintly.

"How is Lady Gaia?" he asked.

"Oh, Lord Uranus."

Standing near the altar was a woman wearing white clerical clothing. She bowed in greeting while making a dark expression.

The white-robed woman smiled bitterly and softly caressed the unconscious woman\'s cheek. The unconscious woman on the altar was Gaia.

"She still hasn\'t regained consciousness. She opens her eyes from time to time but ends up falling asleep soon after…"

"Hm," Uranus expressed. He mumbled in a bittersweet tone, "I see she has still not regained consciousness even after a prince of Hell who had rooted himself on Earth has died.”

Guardians, the heroes whom Gaia had chosen, had managed to kill a prince of Hell on Earth, but Gaia was still in the same condition as before.

"Her complexion has gotten a tiny bit better, but…"

"The situation will likely not be resolved unless the fundamental cause is eliminated."

Gaia had used all of her power to seal the Demon of Prophecy. Due to her excessive interference with the system, her Divinity was at risk of being annihilated.

"Haaa." Uranus couldn\'t help but sigh.

The world Gaia was protecting… was a beautiful blue star.

The woman who was taking care of Gaia grabbed Gaia\'s hand.

"Lord Uranus, if only you could directly intervene—"

"Not possible," Uranus said, shaking his head.

The woman couldn\'t understand why that was the case.

"I don\'t understand. Why is the system blocking interventions from the divine realm even in such a situation?!” the woman shouted angrily.

Uranus shook his head. "I do not know. We have no choice but to follow the providence of the universe."

"But…"

"But we still have some cards we can play," Uranus said quietly. "I have asked for the help of a god from another world this time."

"But if they\'re a god, they shouldn\'t be able to interfere in the human realm…"

"Not entirely. Gods from other worlds can bypass the restrictions to an extent."

Tirion, God of Heroes, was a lower god, but the fact that he had been able to lend his power to a human was proof of what Uranus said.

However, the system restrictions were so tight that a god would be annihilated just for trying to communicate with a person in the human realm, let alone lending power to them. Only upper gods like Gaia were able to interfere with the system.

Tirion had been annihilated. Nevertheless, he had managed to give great power to a human, who was neither an incarnation nor a successor. It was proof that gods from other worlds weren\'t held to the same harsh restrictions.

The woman\'s eyes shone after hearing Uranus\'s words.

"Then, which god from the continent of Aernor have you—"

"No, I have asked for the help of a god from an even further dimension. She was acquainted with Lady Gaia before Lady Gaia became like this."

"Who is—"

"She will be here soon."

Uranus turned around.

A white Rift opened, and a woman walked out. Blinding light radiated from the goddess with glorious blonde hair.

"So, this is the world Gaia\'s in charge of," she said.

The blonde woman looked around, and Uranus walked toward her.

"Thank you for coming," he expressed.

"You must be Uranus. I heard about you from Gaia long ago." The blonde goddess sighed deeply after looking at Gaia. "How did she end up like this?"

"She sacrificed herself to seal the power of the Demon of Prophecy."

"Demon of Prophecy…?" The goddess tilted her head.

"We do not know their exact identity because the information that we can acquire is very limited, but…" Uranus explained with a heavy voice. He clenched his hand into a fist. "A demon named Satan is the most likely the Demon of Prophecy."

"Satan? There\'s a Satan in this world too?"

"He is likely different from the Satan in your world."

"Mm…" The goddess fell into deep thought. "Gaia might die at this rate. Then this world will…"

"I will not let that happen, even if I were to be annihilated in exchange,” Uranus declared with an intense gaze.

The goddess nodded with a heavy expression.

She asked, "So, what are you requesting me to do? By the way, I can\'t interfere too much either."

"I am aware. This is what I request of you."

Uranus snapped his finger.

An image of a human with a sharp gaze appeared.

"His name is Oh Kang-Woo. He is the human that the incarnation of Lady Gaia trusts the most. I wish for you to give him as much of your power as possible."

"Mm… What kind of human is he?"

"To be honest with you, I do not know either."

"You don\'t?"

Uranus nodded. "After Lady Gaia collapsed, it became more difficult for the gods of this world to interfere with the system. We have only managed to find out about the human Oh Kang-Woo through Lady Gaia\'s incarnation, but… I can guarantee that he is an extremely exceptional human."

A human had killed a prince of Hell.

Uranus did not know how the battle had played out, but he\'d heard from Gaia\'s incarnation that the one who had killed the prince of Hell was a human named Oh Kang-Woo.

"I would like to raise this man as the hope of our world," Uranus stated firmly.

The blonde goddess narrowed her eyes.

"Hmm…" she said, "I want to see that human with my own eyes first to see if he\'s worthy of becoming the hope of this world."

"...You are quite cautious."

The goddess shook her head while making an expression that suggested she\'d remembered something unpleasant.

"I\'ve gone through a horrible experience because of a certain human garbage," she explained.

"Hm. What kind of human was he?"

"A peerless piece of trash named Lee Ki-Young[1]—fuuu, you don\'t need to pay him any mind. He has nothing to do with this world."

The woman shook her head again as if she was erasing a nightmare from her mind.

She continued, "Anyway, I will go see that human Oh Kang-Woo and see if he\'s trustworthy. I\'m indebted to Gaia, so I also want to help as much as I can."

"I will entrust this matter to you, Goddess Benigoa."

Uranus bowed to Benigoa, who had come from a world far away.

1. A Regressor Instruction Manual reference. Do check it out to know the background story! ☜