She steps up in the middle of the crowd, hooded in white. She clenches her staff in her hand.
"I knew it already... the first time I saw you... you don't belong in this timeline," she says, making my eyes flinch at what I just heard.
My forehead furrows as I try to comprehend. "I don't know if you're just like me... but you don't know what you're doing," she adds.
Her staff shifts into a longsword, glinting from Hwang Jae Min's pristine light.
"You need to die..." she says, before disappearing—then appearing right in front of me. On instinct, I manage to deflect her sword with my blade.
Sparks fly everywhere as we both leap back.
"Seo Jun-ssi!" Hwang Jae Min shouts, concern etched in his voice.
"Stay away from here! Stay where you are!" I shout back at him.
If this woman is the Plagiarist, then I'm sure she'll try to kill Hwang Jae Min.
"Timeline?" I ask.
"What are you saying, woman!" I snap at her.
"Don't act like you don't know!" she snaps back, lunging at me as I keep parrying her attacks.
"Hwang Jae Min needs to die here," she starts, "so he can activate his Divine Blessing!"
She slashes swiftly, her blade a blur—but I block every strike.
My ears perk up at what she says.
"Divine Blessing?" I echo, before kicking her back.
She staggers, boots skidding across the stone.
"You're clueless... You're one of those early regressors, aren't you?" she says, and her words churn something in my gut.
"Well, sorry to spoil the fun—" her eyes narrow, voice colder now, "but your hero needs to die early this time."
Is she a...
But it's too early... How?
I grit my teeth, sheathing Bloodtears and drawing my twin combat knives—for speed this time.
"You're the one who doesn't know what you're doing! Your early arrival caused a massive distortion!" I shout, weaving between her attacks.
I manage to bruise her leg with a swift slash, and as I twist into a spin, my blade catches her cloak—ripping it clean off.
The fabric flutters in the air.
And there she is.
The mage we helped earlier. The one nearly killed by the Daemon.
Now fully exposed, her face no longer hidden beneath the hood.
A woman with long hair tied in a tight bun, wearing a cavalry uniform and leather boots.
Her eyes—sharpened, grim, older than before.
"Now I have to deal with the mess you've made!" I shout, slashing at her in a flurry of steel.
She barely keeps up, deflecting each strike, sparks flaring between our blades.
"If Hwang Jae Min doesn't activate his Divine Form early, he'll die at the hands of the Second Calamity!" she barks, just before I leap back, widening the gap between us.
My boots skid across the ground.
Wait—what?
Second Calamity...?
I freeze for a moment, her words crashing into my mind like thunder.
Calamities.
They're not just threats—they're the end of everything.
Beings from another world, commanders of destruction, each one strong enough to level cities and turn continents to ash.
The first appeared after the Hell Gates opened.
A red dragon named Avantres Ignis.
That bastard didn't just arrive. He descended—like judgment itself.
He shook the world and turned it upside down.
And now she's talking about the second?
But I can't let her kill Jae Min.
Even if she's a regressor—
Even if she knows something I don't—
Her arrival this early is warping everything. She's becoming a distortion, a fracture in the plotline itself.
But still...
Why?
Why did she show up now?
What pushed her to come this soon?
I sigh, the weight of the timeline settling on my shoulders again.
So many threads are unraveling.
So many pieces out of place.
How am I supposed to give him—a man draped in white, meant for something far brighter—a good ending when everything around him is falling apart?
"You need to let me kill Hwang Jae Min!" she shouts, voice cracking with desperation.
"It's the only way to stop the Second Calamity!"
"I can't let you do that," I say sharply. "Every move you've made is already causing massive shifts. If I let you go through with this, this world—this entire line—will break."
"You arrived too early," I add, meeting her eyes. "The timeline isn't ready."
She trembles, but not from fear—from fury and exhaustion.
She's from the future. That much is clear.
And I don't know how many loops she's been through, how many times she's regressed, how many times she's failed—but from the way she clutches her sword like it's the last thing holding her together... she's been through hell.
"I didn't sacrifice everything in my timeline just to be stopped by someone too ignorant to understand what's at stake!" she screams, charging again.
Her strikes are wild now—
Not sloppy, but fueled by something darker.
Desperation. Loss. Pain.
I meet her blade with mine, steel against steel, parrying each blow—but they're getting heavier.
Faster.
More erratic.
She's breaking.
And so is the world.
We have different terms for time.She call it "timeline."But ever since I realized this world revolves around a story...I've only ever called it the plotline.
"Tons of lives died! Eunseok, Yuuna, Sun Hee... they'll all die!" she cried out, her voice cracking as her blade came crashing down with each name.
Tears streamed down her face—but her strikes never faltered.
I was stunned.That name—Eunseok—It echoed inside me, piercing through the noise.That idiot...
"If only you had arrived when you were meant to—!" I started, trying to reason with her—
But her fist crashed into my face before I could finish.
I staggered back, skidding across the ground, blood hot in my mouth as my boots tore a rough trail behind me.
She stood there, chest heaving. Eyes wide. Knuckles shaking.
I tasted the iron and spit it out.
Think.Did I really change anything that badly?
I didn't rewrite the plotline. I just placed my own character inside it.Shifted a few pieces.Tweaked some things to survive.But nothing I did… nothing... should've overlapped with any regressors. Especially not her.
But now…Eunseok's name won't leave my head.
If Jaemin doesn't activate his Divine Form…Eunseok will die.
"And who the hell are you to say that!?" she screamed, voice cracking with fury."I don't even know who you are! You weren't there—you don't exist in my time!You're not supposed to be here… so who the hell are you?!"
Before I could speak, she dashed at me again, her blade whistling through the air with terrifying speed.Strike after strike—she rained them down like a storm, and all I could do was leap back, parrying, weaving, surviving.
Her footwork was sharp. Her movements—desperate.She was faster than before. Angrier.
"You need to listen to me!" I shouted between dodges."Hwang Jae Min can't die right now—if you kill him here, you'll trigger a distortion so massive it'll tear open a hole in the plo-..in the timeline!" i staggered.
But my words bounced off her fury.
"Cut the crap!" she yelled. "Tell me who you are!!"
Her blade crashed against mine, sparks flying. My arms trembled.I gritted my teeth and shoved her back just enough to speak.
"I'm not a regressor," I muttered, the lie rolling out with as much calm as I could fake.
She froze.
For a moment—just one moment—she hesitated, her boots skidding across the ground as she leapt back.
Confusion twisted across her face. Her brows furrowed hard, her teeth clenched tight.
"…Bullshit."
"I'm sorry if this sounds strange…" I said, slowly, my voice steady but low."Trust me… if you keep going, you're only going to make things worse."
With a sharp breath, I slid both blades back into their holsters.
She stared at me—eyes still gleaming with disbelief, maybe even fear. Her chest rose and fell. The fire in her stance faltered.
"I need to send you back," I added.
Those words struck her like a hammer. Her eyes widened, her lips parting slightly in shock.She took a step back. Then another.
"What…?" she breathed.
Her hands trembled slightly around her sword. She wasn't attacking now—she was processing. Reeling.
I need to retcon this event.Immediately.
Before everything worsens.
Before I could even react, she vanished in the blink of an eye.
No hesitation. No warning.
She reappeared right in front of Hwang Jae Min—her sword gleaming with murderous intent as she lunged straight toward his throat.
I bolted after her, faster than thought. My instincts took over. I caught up just in time, grabbing her from behind and locking her arm tight with mine, holding her back.
"Seo Jun-ssi!" Jae Min's voice rang out, his eyes wide with panic. He looked at me, frozen, unsure if he should intervene.
He remembered what I told him earlier—to stay away. And yet, now that we were right in front of him, all he could do was grip his sword tightly, trembling.
He took a step forward.
"Don't move a single muscle!" I snapped at him as i was straining to hold her. She thrashed violently in my arms.
"Unhand me, you bastard!!" she screamed.
"Seo Jun-ssi…" Jae Min called again, breath shaking as he prepared to act.
But then—She did something I didn't expect.Something only a regressor would do.
"If I can't kill him…" she muttered. "Then I can always try again."
In one fluid motion, she shifted her blade to her free arm—And stabbed herself straight through the chest.
The blade passed through me too.
"PARK SEO JUN!!!" Jae Min's voice cracked as he rushed toward us—but it was already too late.
She leaned her head back, against me. Blood soaked her lips, but she still chuckled.
"If you're not a regressor…" she rasped, "then when I come back… I won't be seeing you again."
Her words echoed like a curse.Jae Min's boots pounded against the ground, but they sounded farther and farther away.
I felt cold. I leaned my head on her shoulder, gasping.
"You can't… cough …assure that," I muttered.
Blood dripped from my mouth as she twisted the blade deeper.
We both collapsed.
The world spun.
But I wasn't done. Not yet.
With the strength I had left, I raised my hand—And flicked my finger.
A pulse echoed.A ripple of power reverberated through the air.
"I'm not done with you" i whisphered before my eyes was slowly being drowned by darkness.
All of a sudden, the world shifted.
From where we lay—bodies soaked in blood—the space around us warped.
Right after I flicked my finger, the cavern was devoured by darkness. The air bent inward. Everything collapsed into silence.
Until only the two of us remained.
[You are now in a Revision Zone]
[Personal Skill: Retcon has been activated]
A few moments passed in stillness.
Then I opened my eyes.
I was standing again—upright, in the middle of the scene. Everything around me was frozen in place, like a paused memory etched in time.
I knew this state.I remembered this power.
Time had halted, and I was the only one able to move.
Right in front of me... was her.
She was drawn back into herself—breath catching, pupils shrinking in shock as if her body still remembered what had just happened.
She gasped, her body trembling. A faint shimmer clung to her figure—like the residue of her previous action, rewound, not erased.
But her eyes met mine.
And for the first time…She looked scared.
She looked around, confusion etched into every breath. Her eyes scanned the cavern—everyone was frozen. Hwang Jae Min. The bystanders. Even the dust in the air had stopped moving. Time itself had cracked.
"Where... where am I?!" she shouted.
I didn't answer. Not yet.
Instead, I opened the interface—my personal narrative space—and activated Narrative Re-Write.
A translucent screen flashed before my eyes, stretching wide in front of me like a scroll from the sky. The distorted paragraphs glowed in violent orange and red, twisting like corrupted code—each one marking a piece of the timeline she'd fractured.
"I—I'm asking you!!" she barked.
"Don't distract me…" I said flatly, raising my hand.
A spectral pen materialized in front of me, weightless and humming with the sound of inked fate.
"Cut the crap! Where the hell am I?!" she yelled, drawing her blade with shaking hands. "Didn't I already kill us?!"
"We are dead," I confirmed without looking.
Then I began rewriting.
Every flick of the pen cut through the corrupted story. I scrawled across the air, repairing broken lines and resetting her interference—every anomaly she left, every skipped development, every stolen scene.
She didn't understand.
Her eyes blazed with fury.
"You bastard!!" she screamed, and lunged toward me.
But the moment her sword neared me—
It shattered.
Not into steel or sparks—Into words.
The sword's name.Its forged origin.The page it was born from.Every narrative detail that made it real... crumbled to the ground, like torn-out sentences burned at the edges.
She leapt back, eyes wide in disbelief.
Her blade lay before her, now nothing more than scattered lines of text.
She gasped.
"Who… are you?" she asked, her voice softer this time—curiosity and fear rippling behind her eyes. The tremble in her voice betrayed the desperation she tried so hard to hide.
I paused, hand still hovering midair as glowing words shimmered before me.
Then I asked, "Those three entities… what did you do to them?"
The question struck her harder than anything before.
She didn't answer.
She just stood there, frozen in place, like the rest of this fractured timeline. But unlike them, she was conscious—and terrified.
"Answer me," I said, voice firmer now.
She flinched, then instinctively glanced toward the cavern's exit.
"Don't bother," I muttered. "You can't exit my domain. We're in the Revision Zone. Even if you walk out of this dungeon, you're still here… with me."
She stopped moving.
Her fingers curled slowly into fists as she processed what I just said.
And then, barely above a whisper, "Who are you… really?"
I tilted my head slightly, still holding the pen in the air, still editing the strands of reality like they were lines in a manuscript.
"I am," I said, "what you think I am."
I wasn't sure what she truly thought—but I could see it written across her face: awe, confusion, a hint of reverence.
"…A deity?" she asked cautiously, almost accusingly.
I let out a small chuckle, not mocking—just amused.
"A deity? Really?"
"No... I am someone beyond that," I said, taking a slow step forward. "I may not be on par with a deity yet, but I can bend reality."
She flinched slightly at my words.
"Now... answer my first question," I continued, eyes flicking to the system screen hovering nearby.
"It's my skill," she finally admitted. "Formula Editing."
That made me pause. Interesting. Rare. Dangerous.
"And what does the beast really look like?" I pressed, voice low.
She gulped before replying, hesitant. "Cerberus... It's Cerberus. I edited his life formula and split him into three."
My eyes narrowed.
"When did you do it?"
Her voice was nearly a whisper. "The first raid of the Olympian Guild."
She spoke like someone under arrest—no system restraint needed, just truth weighing heavier than chains.
"That answers my question," I said, then began rewriting every distorted plot thread still lingering.
Line after line was replaced—restored to how they were meant to be. And when it was done, another screen flickered into view.
[Do you want to sync the edited parts to the final draft?]
Syncing them would mean merging all the revised lines with the story that's currently unfolding—one shaped by every step, every decision my character, Lee Han-Seon, makes.
I tapped confirm.
[Synchronizing edited lines...]
"Am I... going to be erased from reality?" she asked. Her voice trembled, eyes filled with fear.
I glanced at her, smirked.
"Like I said, I'm sending you back—to your original timeline. I've already adjusted your reappearance to happen at the exact moment it's supposed to."
My spectral pen dissolved into the air with a faint shimmer.
"What's your name?" I asked, voice calm now.
"Kim Si-Won," she replied, her gaze steadying, softening.
"...Park Seo-Jun," I said, stepping back. I raised my hand, fingers extended loosely.
"Till we meet again."
Before she could speak again, I flicked my finger.
Time folded—then snapped back.
To the moment.
The exact moment we both died.
Darkness swallowed my vision, slow and absolute. And then, in the void:
[YOU HAVE EXPERIENCED YOUR SECOND DEATH].