Chapter 284: Park Sirin (1)

The history of Earth changed radically because of a single person.

A history that would have been normal, without major variations, full of magic shows, surprising circus spectacles, yes, but without truly altering the course of the world.

The appearance of a god caused the change.

A mage, called a god despite having a human body, transformed the world.

The Demon God appeared three years after the Park Sihoo incident and founded her own empire.

Without a doubt, the Park Sihoo returned for a brief moment — then why was the Demon God secluded for three years?

“No… no, no, no. No… it shouldn’t be like this!!”

She was searching for a method.

On the monitor screen that flickered as it shut off, she stared fixedly at a phrase that shouldn’t exist.

[Sub-player Corin Loch. Beginning succession.]

To recover her lost world.

Because she couldn’t abandon her love, her obsession, or her delusion, she searched for a path for three years.

That he would make a game over and return like she did.

Or, if that was impossible, that she herself could cross again.

They say mages are sages who find truth through reason.

But in what she pursued, there was no reason, nor was she seeking truth.

They were emotions, sensitivity, stubbornness, and obsession.

Three years.

She had to admit the conclusion.

He will not game over.

Of course — that man walked the path of the hero even with that mediocre triple-technique and his spear style.

Unlike her, who crushed with overwhelming force, he was a winner — someone born with the anomalous talent of always finding a path to victory.

A hero. That title fit him more than anyone.

Then could she travel to that world?

She also reached an answer.

Alone, she could not.

Magical research requires money and personnel.

And she had been a mage who researched magic for three years within Arhan Heroic Legend.

Unlike the other Park Sihoo who only learned combat magic, she understood magic as a discipline, researched it, and had talent to create her own originals.

A true genius.

She believed she could prove her theory with the resources of the modern world.

When she finally left her seclusion, the Earth was changing in strange ways.

First, the Russian president had been replaced; they say that dictator’s head was split.

The border conflict between China and India ended basically in China’s defeat; apparently the president of India is some kind of “human Pikachu.”

Korea had changed more than expected.

It was the country with the most returnees, and it was said that the U.S. and Europe paid fortunes to take some of them.

There were many mages, so it was one of the few places where serious research was done.

Perfect, exactly what was needed.

Park Sirin concluded she could not complete the “dimensional portal theory” alone.

Korea had no shortage of money, and there were enough mages to form a research team.

The problem was whether Korea would act according to her will.

She first evaluated the other Park Sihoo. The magic they used, their techniques, their level — she investigated extensively the possibility that there existed a Park Sihoo stronger than her.

And then.

“Eh? I can just take the whole Earth like this?”

She reached an absurd conclusion.

They were weak.

Most were weaker than she imagined.

“The grand majority can’t even surpass Marie Dunaleff and they make game over.”

First filter, Marie Dunaleff and the Mountain King.

Second filter, Heavenly Raksha Hwaran.

Most didn’t even surpass the first-year arc.

Those who passed the saint rescue, the subjugation of the Magic Tower, or the Harvest Festival of the second year were only a handful.

“And among the Top 10, only three reached the battle against Tates?”

Are they idiots?

Why do they have such low levels?

Why didn’t they reach 99? What are those stats?

She thought for a moment and remembered the fundamental difference.

They didn’t have that man at their side.

Even she, called Demon God, had at the beginning been an ordinary person.

She had foreseen the entire story, obtained hidden pieces impossible to get early, and prepared perfectly for the fight against Marie.

Even so, she almost died.

And she didn’t die only because an extra risked his life to protect her.

“Hu… Sihoo, can you hold on for three minutes?”

In the battle against Marie Dunaleff, against the Mountain King, and against Heavenly Raksha Hwaran,

“If I insist a little longer, I think I can find a way to win.”

He always found a path to victory, and for her, that gave the margin to reach her maximum potential.

That companion who bet everything for her gave her mental space, and that space strengthened her.

Her easy leveling was undoubtedly thanks to him.

“…Oppa.”

After remembering, she recalculated coldly.

Korea had many rankers, a good number of mages, and a stable economy.

The problem was that, just like in the West, the Korean Park Sihoo didn’t consider overthrowing the country just because they had obtained power.

They wanted fame or attention, but not to start a coup.

‘If I want to take the country, I need support.’

The Demon God finished her calculations and descended directly onto North Korea.

Even the 38th Parallel meant nothing to someone who dominated teleportation.

“What… what is this?”

“Who is this woman?”

The Demon God’s magic burst forth.

She cast a protective spell on the pig and the witch she had once seen on TV, and petrified in space the 400 high-ranking officials gathered in the People’s Assembly.

If she didn’t release them, they would lose their self and will forever, wandering in an eternal void.

“Hiiik!”

Petrifying hundreds didn’t even take three seconds.

Seeing those two sisters fall to their knees before the scene, the Demon God even felt satisfaction.

“I suppose I really am Korean.”

She never thought of herself as patriotic, but punishing the parasites who had always whined since her birth gave her a kind of justice and satisfaction.

She then asked the two sisters.

“If you have hidden secret funds, tell me all of them.”

Since they didn’t cooperate, she gave them a “spatial prison” where one second feels like ten years.

They confessed immediately.

And so, after a “legal” succession of the North Korean regime and the purge of the old government.

After reunification and elections.

After crushing China when it tried to pick a fight.

She founded the Great Magic Empire of Korea.

Only then could she begin the development of the dimensional portal.

She gathered the Park Sihoo of China and Korea and financed the project with the secret funds of the Chinese Communist Party.

The corruption was so epic that fifteen years of national budget entered all at once.

She even thought that the members of the Communist Party would need to live at least 500 years to spend all that.

Meanwhile, Korea became the dominant power of Asia, rivaling the United States.

But that was irrelevant to the Great President.

“This time I will succeed without fail.”

Glory, fame, power, wealth — everything on Earth was lighter than a single man in her heart.

“Success! We have managed to develop the dimensional portal!”

“Congratulations, Madam President!”

“Long live the Great Magic Empire of Korea!”

“Long live! Long live! Long live!”

“Long live Great President Park Sirin!”

She abandoned everything for love and headed to the other world.

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The dizziness won’t stop.

I feel faint and have no strength in my body.

There are no side effects from having crossed the dimensional portal again. My body is still in the best condition.

Even so, the shaking in my vision must be a mental problem.

Upon returning to Earth, Sirin found Kim Taeseop waiting in front of the dimensional portal.

“Eh? G–Great President?”

A high mage of level 70. He was the administrator she had left in charge of the portal after leaving.

“Keep this… a secret.”

She ignored him and left the base. She activated invisibility magic and went to a small island on the east coast, where her private refuge was.

“Haa…”

The entry to the other world had been a success.

Just as she wanted, she saw oppa living peacefully in the timeline of cycle 100.

He was still winning over women, which irritated her, but she managed to hypnotize him.

However, her plan failed in the end, and after releasing him of her own will, she returned to Earth.

If her place was not at his side, then no world held meaning.

She woke up in the bed of her refuge the next morning, without anyone knowing she had returned, and Sirin once again realized that the place beside her was empty.

“Ah…”

It was like having had a sweet dream for a week.

The love whispered to her every morning was fake, and the warmth of bodies touching had lasted only an instant.

The end of a love to which she had devoted half her life ended far too empty.

“It had to be this way…”

From the beginning, she never had a chance.

That man was so good he was foolish. How stupid must one be to engrave such an oath into his own body?

A villain like her could never have stood beside him.

He must have lived well.

No, what is the point of such a stupid assumption?

It was she who lived the wrong life.

She was born crazy, so he would have abandoned her anyway.

Their natures were incompatible, like water and oil.

“Ugh…”

Even so, he kept appearing in her mind.

The voice full of love whispering in her ear, the affection brushing against her skin, the moments when he looked at her smiling.

The 21 years of Park Sirin’s life, the 3 years as a player, the 15 as the Demon God.

Among all of that life, that single week had been her happiest moment.

And because it was a life she herself had let slip away, the regret and sadness returned even stronger.

If she could return.

If she could start from the beginning.

She would do anything for that man who hated her.

If she could be by his side, even if they asked her to be a slave, she would accept it.

But even as a Demon God, she could not turn back time, and she could never erase her past.

She could only feel no regret knowing that, at the end of her life, the man she loved was still alive.

The mathematics student Park Sirin.

The player Park Sihoo, with her gender changed.

The great president of the Magical Empire of Korea, the Demon God Park Sirin.

Now all of them reached an ephemeral end.

Her life ended.

The end of her fervent love.

It held enormous meaning for her.

***

Even if she considered her life to have ended, the basic activities to remain alive did not stop.

When she was hungry, she ate; when she was sleepy, she slept.

Wearing herself down like that, going from sea to bed and from bed to sea.

“…”

Sirin chewed something she picked up from the rocky ground of the island.

Some kind of seaweed washed in by the waves.

Her body, enhanced by enormous mana, did not age or die easily.

Even if she ate things a human should not eat, she expelled the poison and converted it into pure energy.

She told no one that she had returned.

Her finished life withdrew from everything.

Neither power, nor wealth, nor pleasure had any meaning to her anymore.

She consumed only the calories needed to avoid dying and watched the waves with empty eyes.

A body that could not die and a soul that could not kill itself — a life reduced to the minimum.

That end came after a few months.

“Should I erase my consciousness?”

Even thinking was annoying.

Even picking up food with her hand felt tedious.

She tried spending a month without eating or drinking.

When she regained consciousness, her survival instinct had her face plunged into the sea.

“Stupid… Seems I still want to live.”

By merely crossing the sea, she could have wealth and people eager for her in absurd amounts.

But she rejected all of that and lived looking toward only one man.

And even after such a devastating failure, it seemed she still wanted to remain alive.

She searched for methods of mental suicide, since her body protected by mana could not die.

If she turned herself into a living corpse, she might stop thinking.

For the first time in a long while, she went to Seoul.

She hid her face and bought what she needed.

Obtaining magical items was not difficult.

The Magic Tower she had founded for the development of dimensional portals already produced enough tools without her involvement.

In fifteen years, the country she had cultivated out of necessity had become a powerhouse whose main export was magical artifacts.

“Huu…”

After that trip to Seoul, she crafted the necessary items, deployed a powerful magic circle, and sealed even her own mana.

All that remained was to prepare the neurotoxic poison that would destroy her brain. At that final step, Sirin suddenly remembered some tangerines.

“I want to eat…”

How long had it been since she last ate fruit?

Surprised by the sudden appetite, she bought a box of tangerines from a rural delivery truck.

She didn’t eat them right away.

She submerged one whole in the toxic solvent she was preparing.

With that amount, maybe the reagent would have a tangerine flavor.

When she leaned in to smell it—

“Ugh…”

A sudden wave of nausea. Even her cold mage’s mind grew cloudy before something so unexpected.

She approached again.

“Ugh!?”

Again the nausea. The discomfort. A reaction too typical to be mistaken.

“Ah…”

She was pregnant.

The identity of the father did not even need to be mentioned.

She had been pure her whole life. In her monotonous existence there had only ever been one man.

The life of Park Sirin, the human, had ended. It should have ended.

But the life of Park Sirin, the mother, was about to begin.