Chapter Text
The moment he stepped into the gate, Sung Jinwoo knew that something was wrong.
A Red Gate, he thought at first. The sense of incongruity reminded him of the few other times he had walked into one, surprise that turned into a slow trickle of realisation, both unpleasant in their own ways.
This gate had been ranked High A, which was why the raid permit had fallen squarely into his lap without much fuss. As requested, Jinho had said with a grin as bright as sunrise. Only days ago, Jinwoo had asked him to procure permits for higher-ranked gates as a way to level up quickly. Jinho, as usual, had not disappointed.
There was a moment of suspended inaction as Jinwoo remained where he was, taking in his surroundings. He was standing in the middle of an empty street, in a residential area, in broad daylight. As far as he could tell, it was the same street and the same residential area where he had come from, on the other side of the gate. Rows of houses with well-kept gardens lined both sides of the road, quiet at this time of day. Save for the presence of a few Association employees who had greeted him when he had arrived, there was virtually no difference between here and there.
Slowly, Jinwoo began to make his way down the street, every senses on high alert. There were people in some of the houses, hidden from view, but he could sense no danger from them. In fact, he could sense no presence of magic beasts at all. If this was supposed to be a dungeon, then it was nothing like any dungeon he had come across before. And it certainly did not feel like one.
Jinwoo paused, considering his next course of action. There was one very simple and very obvious way to scout a very large area in a short amount of time. He looked up, face angled toward the bright sun in the sky, and took a deep breath.
Come out.
What happened next happened quickly; quickly and completely without warning. The moment he commanded his soldiers to appear, something inside him unravelled instead. Then it, whatever it was, began to slip away, its presence growing dim, fading like a swirl of ink in a flowing stream.
Half a heartbeat later, it was gone.
And, Jinwoo realised, puzzlement giving way to horror, so were his shadows. They were gone. He could no longer sense their presence. Any of them.
Igris, he thought, called, reached out, dread coiling in his gut. Beru. Iron. Tusk. Igris. Igris.
No one answered. Not even Igris, who had never, not even once, not answered him. For a second, the shock froze him where he stood.
Then, after shock, came rage. No one took his shadows from him. Anyone who dared, anyone who so much as try, would pay.
The attack came out of nowhere. Jinwoo stirred, moving away just in time to avoid being cleaved into two by a massive sword. The impact shattered the surface of the road where he had stood, sending a cloud of dust and debris into the air.
For the second time in the last minute alone, Sung Jinwoo froze. Standing in front of him was the thing that had dared to attack him, and he could not help but stare, mostly in disbelief—at the familiar figure and the familiar shape of armour and the familiar red tassel streaming in the wind.
It was Igris. Except it was not Igris. Not his Igris.
It was the creature he had encountered in the job change quest a lifetime ago. The red knight with the terrifying aura. The exact same one who had driven him to a corner and would have killed him in a blink of an eye if not for the smallest fluke.
‘Who are you.’
The voice resounded in his head, dark and terrible, speaking in a language he had never heard of but nevertheless understood.
Jinwoo’s heart throbbed in response. The voice, he realised, must have come from this red suit of armour in front of him. The idea that it could have been Igris’s voice twisted something terrible in him, but he forced himself to remain silent, his mind working furiously. He might have defeated the Architect, but for all Jinwoo knew, there were still dungeons out there specifically designed by the System to help him as the Player. The sudden appearance of this red knight before him was proof enough that this was no ordinary dungeon.
When Jinwoo continued to be silent, the creature grew incensed. Its aura sharpened into something that could cut the air around them.
‘Where is my lord.’ The same voice echoed, this time sounding more like a threat than a question.
Jinwoo narrowed his eyes. “Who is your lord?”
‘My one and only master,’ came the reply, still inside his head. ‘You look like him, but you are not him.’
What the fuck is happening. A world of illusion? An alternate dimension? Either possibility would lead to various complications that he really could live without at the moment. Retreating outside the gate began to look like the wisest course of action at the moment.
Jinwoo chanced a glance at the gate behind him—only to find, to his dismay, that it had disappeared.
The split second when he glanced away was all the opening his opponent needed to launch another attack. It moved with the same devastating speed, emitting the same crushing pressure he had felt in the job change ques.
The difference, of course, was that Jinwoo was no longer the same person he had been back then. In a blink, he summoned Kamish’s Wrath and met the attack head on with both daggers. The blades clashed. Jinwoo gritted his teeth as lightning spilled around him and thunder sang in his ears. The impact pushed the red knight one, two steps back, but just as swiftly, it regained its balance.
That was when Jinwoo finally noticed the weapon it used. He recognised it at once—the white-blue blade, the streaks of lightning along its length, the way it made the air around it hum and crackle.
It was the Demon Monarch’s sword.
That was all it took for fury to overwhelm his misgivings. “How dare you use that sword against me,” Jinwoo hissed, felt the way his magic surge and seethe just under his skin, ready to sink every corner of the street into oblivion. “I was the one who gave it to you.”
The red knight stilled. Heartbeats lengthened into seconds, maybe even minutes. Then, very slowly, it withdrew the sword and lowered itself to its knee.
“Yes, you were.”
This time, it, he, spoke using his real voice, deep and resonant. For a moment, Jinwoo could only stare, caught between a sense of unreality and the last tendrils of rage. To see the red knight, this image of Igris, kneeling before him was jarring enough. The fact that he could sense no connection between them made it worse. Except no, that wasn’t quite right. He could still sense him, sense his overwhelming presence and unbending will even as he knelt before the person who was supposed to be his king.
A different kind of anger, all twisted with bitterness, rose inside Jinwoo. “What’s the point of getting down to your knee when your heart still refuses to acknowledge me?” he snapped.
The red knight said nothing for some time. Then he tilted his helmet, a minute gesture, and yet it carried all the weight of defiance. “Because every part of me says that you are my master,” he said in an expressionless voice that still managed to strike all the wrong chords in Jinwoo. “And yet I know, beyond any doubt, that you are not.”
“Then it’s mutual,” Jinwoo retorted, pissed off. “You are not my Igris.”
The red knight hesitated. “You have an Igris?”
“Yes,” Jinwoo said brusquely. “And you are not him. So what the hell is happening?”
Neither of them tried to hazard any guess, at least not openly. Jinwoo had his own host of theories, each more unpleasant than the last, but he had no intention to share them with this not-Igris.
In the end, it was the red knight who spoke, slow and heavy. “My master was with me, and then he was not. There was no warning. No premonition. Nothing. He simply disappeared. And afterwards, I could find no trace of his presence anywhere.” He paused, pain radiating off him so thickly Jinwoo could almost see its footprints in the air. “Except no, I did. Something like his presence, and yet different.”
“Me.”
“Yes.” The red knight bowed his head. Jinwoo recognised it as frustration more than any show of deference. How strange it was to sense something so wild, so volatile, from his loyal knight.
But then again, this wasn’t his loyal knight, was it? This was a different Igris entirely.
Which could only mean this was a different world entirely.
“My mother and sister.” Jinwoo suddenly remembered, heart hammering painfully inside his chest. “Where are they?”
The red knight raised his face. “Safe at home. What does–”
Jinwoo took off at once, leaping across rooftops, cables, and poles. If the gate was located in the same place as it had been on the other side, then he should be able to reach home in fifteen minutes or less—assuming that his house, too, was in the same place. The fact that he could not simply do a Shadow Exchange rankled, but there was no choice. He could sense no connection with any of his shadows. For all he knew, there was no such thing as 'shadows' here, or the Shadow Monarch.
By the time Jinwoo arrived at his building, his pulsing unease had turned into a maelstrom of terrible things that threatened to destroy everything in his path. He raced upstairs at once, encountering no one on his way, no familiar face to ease his panic into something more bearable.
Jinwoo only stopped running after he had gone through the front door. Because there, just past the doorway, stood the shadows of his High Orc lieutenants, guarding the entry.
Except instead of three, there were four of them.
They all stared at him, unmoving, blocking his way into the house. A heartbeat later, Jinwoo decided that he had had enough.
“Move,” he spoke in a soft deadly voice, eyes alight with all the terrible things that roiled and seethed inside him.
The four hesitated. Then, one by one, they shuffled to the sides and lowered themselves to their knees, subservient to his will.
Jinwoo had barely taken one step inside when he heard a familiar voice.
“Jinwoo?”
In the end, it was the sight of his mother, her hair cut short as it had never been in his life, in any part of his living memory, which hammered in the fact that he was truly lost, adrift and so far from home.
When Jinwoo broke down to tears, it was her arms that came around him, enclosing his bigger and taller build in her warmth—and just like that, he was once more a crying child who had just hurt his mother all over again.
“There, there,” her voice caressed his ear. “It will be alright.”
And Jinwoo, once more, tried to believe her.
End Chapter 1