This...
This wasn't just a threat.
This wasn't part of the original Plotline.
The distortion is targeting him.
Trying everything it can to end him here and now.
Whatever rewrote this story—
wants him gone.
The entity crept closer—
its crooked frame towering over him now, shadow swallowing light.
And then—
it struck.
A twisted, contorted fist came crashing down.
But instinct kicked in.
Hwang Jae Min ducked and leapt back, his boots skidding against the cavern floor.
He gritted his teeth, eyes sharp, sword already gripped tight in both hands.
With a shout, he lunged forward—
bladeswing fast, sure—
but met with resistance.
The entity caught the strike, effortlessly deflecting it.
"You will die here," it said, voice sharp and almost... sympathetic.
Twisted pity laced its words like poison.
"I'll tear you apart—
limb from limb.
And you won't be able to stop me."
Jae Min leapt back again, breath steadying.
He raised his sword, holding it upright as golden light surged across its length, humming with fury.
Then—
a screen shimmered into view in front of me
[What is this thing saying? That I'm going to die?]
The "Inner Monologue Tap" had activated—
but I hadn't done it.
It must've triggered because of my hidden skill.
I stayed silent, watching—waiting—as Hwang Jae Min surged forward again.
His blade sang through the air, golden energy trailing its arc. The strike landed—
powerful, clean—forcing the entity to stagger, if only for a second.
But it wasn't enough.
The creature's grotesque hand clamped down on the blade—its fingers grotesquely wrapping around steel—and with its other arm, it drove a rigid fist straight into Jae Min's gut.
CRACK.
The blow sent him flying—
his body tumbling violently across the cavern floor.
Stone shattered under him. Bones might have too.
He finally landed—
hard.
Dust rose around his crumpled form.
The entity stepped forward, slow and deliberate.
Predatory.
Its voice dripped like venom:
"Your identity... your name... your very soul... will be mine."
Hwang Jae Min lay broken in the dirt, gasping, blood on his lips.
His hand twitched toward his sword—
just barely within reach—
as he struggled to rise.
As the entity closed the distance, its twisted frame casting a long, monstrous shadow, Hwang Jae Min forced himself upright—
legs trembling, breath ragged.
He lifted his head, only to find it—
right there.
Standing over him. Watching.
Its face—if it could be called that—twisted into a distorted smile, wide and wrong.
"What do... cough you want from me?" Hwang Jae Min rasped, blood dripping from his lip.
The entity tilted its head, grin never fading.
"I want you to die..." it whispered—voice layered, like a hundred voices in one.
Amidst the chaos, Jae Min stood alone—his silhouette framed by ruin, his breath ragged, his body trembling as blood spilled from the corner of his lips, trailing down his chin like a thread of crimson silk. Without Eunseok on his side, one cannot defeat such beings
The entity stared at him, amused. Then, from its back, two more figures emerged—humanoid, yet utterly wrong. Their movements were fluid, like oil sliding over glass.
"Pitiful... aren't they, brother?" murmured the one on the right, voice like a whisper through broken glass.
"Truly. Cowards, hiding behind borrowed strength," sneered the one on the left.
I glance toward the place where Byeom In-seok and the second leader had clashed with the other two entities. Now that both of those creatures stand here, it's clear — they lost.
Even so, I hold on to a sliver of hope that they're still alive.
Upon looking back at Hwang Jae min,
He gritted his teeth, eyes falling to his bloodied palm. His sword was planted into the ground, the steel shaking as if resonating with his heart. Around him, his comrades were still locked in desperate battle against the daemons—screaming, clashing, falling.
He reached down, fingers wrapping around the hilt.
And in that moment, something struck me.
This scene.
These exact words.
Not just familiar...
Identical. Word for word, frame for frame.
The original system had narrated this before.
A deja vu again.
In the next scene, Hwang Jae-min unleashes an ethereal light that floods the surroundings — and that's when the distortion begins.
With a slow and deliberate move, he lifted his sword. A golden surge burst from within him, will turned into radiance, light spilling from his skin. The dungeon, dim and suffocating, shuddered under the sheer force of his awakening.
Behind Jae Min—unseen by all—a figure writhed.
The cherubim.
It screamed loudly silent, the four wings snapping open, however, another pair burst out, two of its wings covered the its head, each feather brimming with ethereal fire. Light spilled from them, so intense it blurred the edges of reality
The three entities flinched from the intense light casted by Jae min—their expressions finally shifting—but not from fear, from what i see,
They didn't fear his light.
They wanted it.
They wanted to drink it dry—
To rend it from his bones—
To devour his soul and take that brilliance as their own.
Because to claim that light...
They would have to kill Hwang Jae Min.
All of a sudden, the system flickered.
A screen tore itself into my vision, glitching violently.
[WARNING – Several Paragraphs Have Been Plagiarized]
[WARNING – Several Paragraphs Have Been Plagiarized]
My eyes narrowed.
No doubt about it now.
Someone was rewriting the original story.
Twisting the main thread.
Hwang Jae Min lit up the entire cavern.
His eyes burned with golden fury, a halo hovering above his head like a crown of fire. Divinity cloaked him—grace forged in gold, raw and blinding. He looked untouchable, like something pulled from scripture.
But to the entities watching him, twisted in mind and shape, he was nothing more than prey.
Just another soul to devour—just another meal to sate their hunger for power.
I scanned the chaos unfolding below.
Yeah... I need to step in.
I've got no idea what's about to happen. I skipped some of these chapters back when I was too eager to see where the story was going. My plot review limit is three chapters only, and that window's long gone.
Now that the distortion's started, the system won't let me scan back again.
If only I had an insight skill or something... would've made things a hell of a lot easier.
"Brother... brother, let me have a bite... will you?" one of the entities said.
Its voice was pleading—if you could even call it that. Twisted and wrong, like something imitating human desperation but getting all the notes off.
I stood still, watching them face each other. They couldn't see me. I was still hidden, cloaked by my skill.
"Let's just enjoy our feast," the middle one said, a grin stretching across what might've been its face. "See who eats more from our main course."
And in the blink of an eye, they vanished.
When they reappeared, they were in front of Hwang Jae Min again. But this time, he was ready.
Golden light surged from his form. Empowered, sharpened, he parried. He dodged. Every swing, every slash from the entities was met with clean, calculated movement.
I could technically override the whole thing, write them to stop using my skill, but that would trigger a DeM.
It's cleaner, safer, if Han Seon Lee, my character, steps in now.
The battle had erupted into chaos.
Hwang Jae Min was outnumbered, and not just that. Every one of them was strong. Unnaturally strong.
"You won't get a piece of me!!" he roared, his voice echoing across the cavern.
A blinding surge of light burst out from him, raw and untamed. The three entities staggered back, flinching at the sudden force. Jae Min stood at the center of it all, raging, divine energy pulsing from his body like wildfire.
Above us, light began to fall.
Tiny sparkling motes drifted down like celestial rain, healing the wounded as they touched the blood-soaked ground. A divine cascade, silent, beautiful, and terrifying all at once.
The cavern trembled with the violent sound of blades striking flesh. Metal screamed. Air cracked.
But still, the three came at him. One after another. Blow after blow.
Each attack landed with brutal force, forcing Hwang Jae Min backward, his boots carving a long, broken trail across the stone floor.
The middle one lunged first, the other two shifting subtly into formation behind it. But just as it moved, it flinched, halted by the sharp snap of fingers cutting through the air.
A red blade flashed in a blur.
It tore through the entity's arm, forcing it to reel back. Black ichor splattered as it clutched the wound, if the mangled limb could even be called an arm.
Hwang Jae Min knelt still, watching as the hem of my brown trench coat swayed in the wake of the impact.
The force had pushed the entity back.
My sword glowed with a red hum, a faint shimmer of energy bleeding off its edge. From the gash in its arm, the black ichor dripped slowly, my blade's bleed effect already taking hold.
"Are you alright?" I asked, extending a hand toward him. He took it without hesitation and pulled himself up.
"Yeah... their attacks are just too heavy," he said, catching his breath.
My arrival hadn't been spontaneous—it was carefully scripted. I had rewritten fragments of the surrounding combat scene using narrative re-write, subtly embedding my entrance between lines of dialogue and action. Hidden turns, concealed cues—tucked into the corners of the storyline like puzzle pieces no one would notice unless they knew where to look.
Legally, I was in.
I didn't break the flow. I slipped into it.
Still, I knew this raid would need to be retconned. These three entities—they weren't supposed to exist. Not like this. And I couldn't fix what I didn't understand. I needed to know what they were before the distortion, before the plagiarist rewrote their roles into something twisted.
With a quiet breath, I sheathed my sword.
My eyes locked onto the entities.
They flinched. They couldn't. Because in their minds, I still didn't exist. I wasn't a part of their script. I wasn't written by the same hand that had shaped them.
That's what made this dangerous.
"Who... are you?" the middle one asked, its wide eyes locked onto me with a sudden shift in awareness.
"Who am I?" I echoed, my voice calm as I drew the two combat knives from the inner pockets of my coat. The steel hummed faintly, catching the light.
"I think it's not important for you to know who I am," I added, stepping forward without hesitation. "Also... I shouldn't be the one doing the asking."
The entity let out a low, jagged laugh. "No matter. We will devour you as well... and extract whatever power you're hiding."
Sinister. Confident. Deluded.
I tilted my head, eyes still fixed on the trio. "Jae Min-ssi," I called without turning, "who do you want to kill first?"
"I don't have time to choose," he replied, wiping the blood from his mouth as the golden halo above his head flared, brighter and sharper than before.
We stood side by side, silent, steady, before we both launched forward at blinding speed, the cavern echoing with the sound of clashing steel and tearing air.
The other two closed in on Hwang Jae Min, and I took the middle one, the slightly bigger, more imposing of the three.
Our fight was a blur. Every strike, every counter, came in flashes. My twin blades met its warped limbs—flesh turned into crude weapons. It was fast, no doubt, but I wasn't about to be outpaced by something that didn't even belong in this story.
In one fluid motion, I twisted my torso, brought my second blade around, and struck it across the cheek. Then, with a precise kick to the hilt, I drove the blade deeper, right through its twisted face and out the other side.
I leapt back in one swift motion, reversing the grip on my blade as my thumb clicked the switch.
Thwip!
A wire shot out from the hilt, snaking through the air and locking onto the other blade still lodged in the entity's cheek. Without hesitation, I yanked it hard.
The embedded blade tore its way out, slicing clean through the creature's twisted flesh in a brutal arc. Dark ichor sprayed as the entity howled in pain—if it even knew what pain was.
With a sharp pull, the blade snapped back, the wire retracting cleanly into my grip.
i catched the other blade and attacked it again in a consecutive punches and slashes, "fight back!" i shouted.
the beating was brutal, if i could say it for my self.
"Activate Bone Carver!" I shouted.
Both blades lit up with a scarlet glow, vibrating with unnatural energy. In a heartbeat, I drove them deep into its chest—right through sinew and bone. The creature screamed, its already torn face stretching wider, unnaturally, grotesquely, as it howled in something between agony and rage.
I yanked the blades free, then fired the embedded wires up toward the ceiling. With a sharp tug, my body launched upward, using the recoil as momentum.
Midair, I twisted.
Target locked.
As I descended, knees bent, I aimed straight for the creature's head.
Slam!
My knee crashed into its face with crushing force, the impact shaking the cavern floor.
The beast twitched beneath me, stunned—if only for a moment.
"Stop!!... Stop!!" it pleaded.
But there was no mercy in me.
How dare this thing beg—when I'm the one suffering from the constant migraines caused by the distortion? Whoever wrote these bastards into the storyline must've been a sadist. A hack. A curse to this entire narrative.
"I said fight back!" I screamed, slamming my fist into its face again and again.
Each punch cracked something. My knuckles split open, blood dripped freely—but I felt nothing. It was like being drugged, numbed, hollowed out. Like someone had filled my veins with novocaine and rage.
The sound of the beating echoed across the cavern like war drums. Dust billowed. Smoke thickened.
And still, I didn't stop.
My face was splattered with its thick, black ichor as I kept pounding its skull into the stone, every blow more merciless than the last.
"Brother!!"
The shriek came from the other one—the one fighting Hwang Jae-min.
But I didn't flinch. This wasn't my creature. Not my design. That meant I had freedom. No Deus ex Machina waiting to punish me for breaking the rules.
The thing beneath me gurgled as more of that foul blood spilled from its torn mouth. Without hesitation, I drove my combat knife straight into its throat.
With my free hand, I flicked a finger. A spectral pen blinked into existence.
And I wrote a single word in the air, quick and sharp:
"Stop."
The glowing characters snapped forward like a commandment, surging toward the approaching entity—ready to bring it to a halt.
The entity froze mid-lunge, halted by the command etched in the very rules of the world I'd manipulated.
Not far from me, the third distortion let out a deafening, twisted scream as Hwang Jae-min's blade tore through its chest. The cavern shook with the sound, the echo sharp enough to rattle bones and leave ears ringing.
I turned away from the paralyzed creature, eyes scanning the battlefield—not the monsters, not the wounded hunters—but past them.
Toward the crowd. Toward the unseen.
"Come out!!" I shouted, voice cutting through the tension like steel. "I know you're here!!"
No response.
I stepped up to the frozen beast, locking eyes with it as I slowly drew Bloodtears, its scarlet edge gleaming under the ambient glow of Jae-min's light.
In one clean stroke, I severed its arm. The black ichor sprayed like a mist, but I didn't even blink.
"I said..." my voice dropped, sharp and clear.
"Come. Out."
Silence.
Only murmurs from the hunters behind me.
And the dying groans of the distortion Jae-min had brought to its knees.
Still, no response from the one I was certain was watching.
But I knew better. Whoever tampered with this story—whoever dragged this filth into my world—was still here. Hiding.
And I wouldn't let them run.
With one final slash, my blade tore through the creature's neck. A sickening crack echoed as its twisted head separated from its body.
The narrative rewrite dissolved. The system's control over the scene fractured, cancelled.
The body dropped, lifeless, with a thunderous thud that echoed through the cavern.
Silence fell.
My eyes moved slowly, scanning between the gaps of the hunters—beyond them. Not at the people... but the space between, the void stitched between moments, where the culprit of it all hides their hand.
Then, I heard it.
A voice.
A woman's voice.
Cold. Furious.
It didn't cry. It trembled with rage.
"You... you ruined it all."
It wasn't aimed at the hunters. Not at the entities.
It was aimed at me.