WeTried Translations

Translator: Joy

Editor & TLC: ZEROSUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Damned Transmigration

Chapter 1

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Transmigration

Twenty-seven.

That’s how old Lee Su-hyeok was when he found himself being transmigrated into another world simply because he was good at a single game.

‘This is insane.’

Tears, screams, and regrets wouldn't change a thing. With a heavy sigh, Lee Su-hyeok pushed himself to his feet.

"Is it time for you to go now?"

"Indeed, it is."

While the whole ordeal was sudden, he was thankful he hadn’t just woken up in someone else’s body. It appeared there was at least some mercy for players like him, sentenced to a new reality only because they played a game with pure dedication.

"Su-hyeok-nim. You must not forget my teachings."

With silver hair and crimson eyes, the woman who’d just spoken was so beautifully flawless she seemed unreal, as if she’d walked straight out of a video game.

Her name was Lorelia, a priestess who served the Goddess of Order. She smiled brightly at Lee Su-hyeok, waving her hand.

"Let's go over a few things one last time. Su-hyeok-nim, what is the name of the body you will be taking over?"

"Yuri."

"Family?"

"None, he's an orphan."

"Other transmigrators?"

"They are not to be trusted."

"The fact that you are a transmigrator?"

"Don’t tell anyone."

"The main enemy of a transmigrator?"

"The God of Chaos."

"Excellent!"

Clap, clap, clap.

Lorelia applauded enthusiastically.

"Most of the knowledge you'll need will be linked to Yuri’s memories, so you shouldn't have too much trouble adjusting to daily life."

Was that really true? It was a point that had been emphasised several times during the transmigration training course, but Su-hyeok remained sceptical about this whole ‘adaptation’ thing.

He was a 27-year-old modern man who was about to get flung into a completely different world. No matter how many memories of the world he retained, could he really adapt perfectly to another planet when he still fondly remembered his old one?

"It might not be easy, but you have no other choice."

Lorelia whispered, as if she could read his very thoughts.

“If you don’t, you won’t stand a chance.”

"Tch, I need you to encourage me, not scare me right before my transmigration" Su-hyeok grumbled with a heavy sigh.

The priestess planted her hands on her hips, her eyes gaining a dangerous glint.

"I, Lorelia, was doing no such thing! I merely offered you a final, heartfelt warning, born of my deep concern for you, Su-hyeok-nim."

"Yes, yes..."

KRRRUMBLE.

A violent tremor tore his attention from her, compelling his gaze upwards to the sky, the same which he had spent so much time training under.

It was an unmistakable message: transmigration was starting.

"You don't need to worry too much."

A smile touched Lorelia’s lips, her rose-coloured eyes crinkling.

"We’re both special, you and I, Su-hyeok-nim. It is for that very reason that I am certain you will survive."

"I hope so."

"Su-hyeok-nim! Why do you have so little confidence?”

Lorelia exclaimed.

“I’ve done everything I possibly can to prepare you for this!"

Lowering her hand from her hip, she slowly clenched her pale fingers into a fist. She held it out in front of her and smiled.

"What is this?"

"It's a fist."

"Yes! It is a fist! Su-hyeok-nim, if you use your fists just as I have taught you, there’s no hardship you won’t overcome!"

She didn’t pull her fist back, and at that moment Su-hyeok wondered how many times he had been struck by it. Then, he slowly clenched his own fist and extended it towards Lorelia.

Tap.

Their knuckles met.

"The sound calling for me is quite loud. I, Lorelia, will take my leave now."

"Yeah, see ya."

"If fate allows, we’ll meet again."

Lorelia kept on smiling, drawing back her fist. In a single, fluid motion, she took hold of her skirt and offered a slight curtsy.

"Well then, Su-hyeok-nim. Enjoy your new life!"

The words hung in the air, and he couldn’t help but let out a hollow laugh at that statement.

A flash of light after, she vanished, and Su-hyeok alone remained in the crumbling reality. He pulled back the fist that was still warm from her touch to scratch his head roughly.

"So it's really happening..."

How did I end up in this situation, you ask?

Well, even if he had heard the explanation several times and had tried to accept it, the reality of it all was a whole different thing, and that got his heart stirring with unease.

The root of this whole mess lay in the game Su-hyeok had been so engrossed in.

Seronis.

That was the name of it, the damn game so fucked up you were forced to start over from scratch with every death, and to make matters worse, it forced the transmigration onto him.

He had gone out of his way to obsessively delve into a game most cursed as a piece of trash and deleted. He had licked every bit of content clean, creating and killing countless characters.

Even after he barely managed to defeat the so-called final boss, he didn't get to see an ending. Instead, a [GAME OVER] screen appeared, and he was sent back to the title screen, the character he had so painstakingly raised wiped from existence.

‘I should have quit back then.’

The regret he had couldn’t be stronger, and it kept lingering like a greasy stain. Lee Su-hyeok let out another deep sigh, allowing his head to droop.

"Fuck."

It was a game, so there had to be an ending. He figured all he needed to do was fulfill a specific condition to reach it, so he started the game all over again.

Trashy games have a strange allure to them. Once you get a taste, you just keep shovelling down the crap.

In the midst of that, a hidden boss was discovered.

The ‘God of Chaos’ could only be encountered on a specific route, and had specs far beyond those of the so-called final boss.

If that were all, he would have just tried hard, beat it once, and been done with it. However, it had a feature that set it apart from other bosses, the one and only element of pvp competition in the godforsaken game, the <Hall of Honour>.

He wanted to cement his game ID at the very top of the hall, a leaderboard ranked purely by the fastest clear times.

「 Hall of Honour
1st Place, UrMumSpammer 」

It was an embarrassing ID, but for all the time he had poured into the rotten game, he was happy to keep it as is.

What he hadn’t counted on was Seronis being a trap, laid by the bastard known as the ‘God of Chaos’ itself.

That being created a game crudely imitating its own world and released it into Su-hyeok's, all to ensnare innocent players. Anyone who dedicated themselves to the shitty game was a possible target.

The so-called honour of being chosen was the prize for achieving first place. It was a vicious scheme that preyed on those who had loved, obsessed over, and mastered the trash game. To top it all off, the transmigration didn't even put them into the bodies of the characters they’d so lovingly raised. Instead, they were shoved in random NPCs.

He had thought it was strange a few times.

The game was far from good, so it only ever attracted a small, niche following. Still, you could find fellow addicts by browsing foreign websites, all addicted to its terrible charm.

And yet, the top ranks of the Hall of Honour were strangely static, and whenever a new name did pop up in the first place, you couldn't find a single screenshot to prove it.

The lack of movement was suspicious, Su-hyeok couldn’t imagine any top player simply letting someone overtake them. He knew he’d personally pull an all-nighter to reverse that. Surely anyone else would have the same competitive drive?

But they apparently didn’t. The prevailing theory was that the top scores were faked by the devs. It was a classic accusation: instead of improving their shitty game, the company created a fake challenge, a ‘dummy record’ to make the players grind endlessly.

While Su-hyeok suspected this was true, it only fuelled his motivation further.

His new goal became beating the ‘unbeatable’ dummy record. If he could just get his name into the number one slot, he felt he could finally achieve closure and move on from the garbage game he’d become obsessed with.

In the end, he did get first place as he wished, but he did not find peace. Instead, he was kidnapped to another world.

"Ah... fuck..."

The more he thought about it, the more unfair it felt. Su-hyeok shook his head, feeling disheartened.

He had received the necessary training for the transmigration, but he was still anxious and afraid. The thought of living as a completely different person in a completely different world was daunting.

‘I am certain you will survive, Su-hyeok-nim.’

He recalled Lorelia's words of encouragement and clenched his fist. Just as he was about to swing it…

Rumble!

The floor collapsed.

‘So this is how the transmigration happens, huh.’

As he plummeted into an endless void, and as Su-hyeok bit back a scream, something important occurred to him.

"Ah."

The twenty-year-old Yuri, into which the twenty seven-year-old Lee Su-hyeok was about to end up, was already dead, and he had never been told why Yuri died.

* * *

His consciousness returned.

‘My mind is... clear.’

There was no memory loss.

The thick, coppery scent of blood was the first thing Su-hyeok— No, Yuri, registered.

He tried checking his surroundings, but his eyes refused to open and his body wouldn't obey. A profound heaviness pinned him down, yet his senses began to slowly, painfully sharpen as he continued breathing that sickeningly metallic air.

‘It's okay.’

This wasn't an unannounced possession. Before it happened, he had received basic training from a priestess who served the Goddess of Order, the one who stood in opposition to the God of Chaos.

The body that he would end up in was 20-year-old Yuri.

Yuri.

Without a family name.

His parents, whom no one would disagree with calling bastards, had put their baby in a basket right after he was past nursing age, slipping in a note that read ‘Yuri’, and abandoned him at the Oldor Orphanage.

Even if they were both orphans, Lee Su-hyeok, who at least had a family name, was slightly better off.

One of his cheeks felt hot.

"Hooo..."

While he remained immobile, focusing all his attention on breathing steadily, something viscous slid down to his slightly parted lips.

There was no mistaking it.

‘Blood?’

‘What the?’

Su-hyeok was told most transmigrators annihilated the original soul and took over their living body. However, that wasn’t his case. Yuri had died before ‘Lee Su-hyeok’ was supposed to take over, making it an uncommon but possible scenario.

The world liked being unpredictable.

An unlucky person can be struck by lightning from a clear sky and die, just as they can trip over their own feet, hit their head, and meet their end.

Twenty seven-year-old orphan Lee Su-hyeok, who was dragged into another world solely for being good at a trash game, possessed such luck, and the 20-year-old orphan Yuri, who happened to die from a pierced abdomen on the day he was supposed to be possessed, was no different.

The fact that the priestess he was assigned happened to not be adept at teaching ‘transmigration’ properly, but rather ‘violence’, only further solidified his luck, or lack thereof.

He held the trinity of misfortunes in his hands:

Transmigrated for being good at a shitty game.
Transmigrating into a dead person.
Transmigrating into a dead person and not knowing their cause of death…!

‘Fuck.’

As his head swirled with thoughts, his hazy mind and dull senses began to sharpen. Yuri continued breathing, the distinct taste of blood still clear on his tongue.

Thump, thump, thump...

The sound of his dead heart starting to beat again became the only thing he could focus on.

Finally, his eyes opened.

"Fuck."

The thought slipped straight out of his mouth, because what greeted him was the sight of a gruesome battle, with corpses littered everywhere.

Shooting up from his spot in a panic, Yuri observed the furniture, clearly marred with slashes and bloodstains. It seemed they were interrupted in the midst of their meal, as broken plates and food were scattered across the blood-soaked table.

Most people would have screamed at such a sight, but Yuri remained silent. He clenched his trembling fists and gritted his teeth.

This wasn't a dream, it was reality.

He looked at a nearby corpse, which had a shallow face and a bulbous nose. Suddenly, a sharp pain lanced through his skull.

Yuri groaned and clutched his head as fragmented memories clicked into place.

‘Jang-sam.’

A name he shouldn’t know surfaced. He was the thug who’d dragged orphan Yuri from back-alley brawls into the world of organised crime.

Once that thought surfaced, memories of where he was and why he’d died followed.

Disgust churned in his gut. He bit his lip, glaring at Jang-sam’s corpse before turning his head. A painting of a crudely drawn snake hung on the wall, symbol of the Black Snake Gang he had once been part of, and he realised he was in their hideout.

Beneath the frame, collapsed on the floor, lay a large man with one arm cleanly severed. Boss Dekan, the man for whom Yuri had to bow and scrape every day, fetching him coffee and massaging his shoulders, was dead.

"..."

Yuri took a deep breath and pressed a hand to his stomach.

The Black Snake Gang controlled a small street in the rural city of Oldor.

As is typical for this kind of organisation, their main business was extorting money from merchants under the guise of protection fees. The money they collected allowed them to loan shark and get into brawls with other gangs.

The same organisation was wiped out in a single attack.

"Come on, Hyung! I told you I killed them all, so why do we need to double-check?"

"You idiot, you never know what can happen. What if one of them was lucky enough to survive? A bastard like that could come looking for you with a knife in the middle of the night, talking about revenge for his lost brothers."

Voices came from outside the office.

Startled, Yuri quickly looked around.

There were no windows, meaning if he wanted to escape, he had no choice but to go through the only door, through which the very people who had annihilated the Black Snake Gang were about to walk.

Wasting no time, he grabbed a dagger lying nearby and flattened himself on the floor right where he had been lying.

Click.

The door opened.

Lying prone on the floor, Yuri peeked through slitted eyes to assess the situation.

"Ugh, I'm so damn tired..."

"Stop whining, little brother."

There were indeed two people, as two pairs of feet were visible. Luckily enough, one of them was limping.

"So, what do you want me to do?"

"Stab each of the bodies with a knife one more time. If no one screams out, they're all dead. Is that so hard?"

"Come on... I'm telling you they're all dead. Why do we have to check again?"

The one dragging his foot was the younger brother, and while he grumbled, he did as he was told.

Stab!

A knife plunged into the corpse lying near the door.

‘I’m fucked.’

Why couldn't they just leave? Why the confirmation kills?

Lying flat, Yuri broke out in a cold sweat.

"Hyung, should I stab our guys' bodies too?"

"Of course you should. Little bro, we weren't exactly good hyungs, were we? If you don't want to taste a vengeful blade later, make sure you stab them properly."

"Fair enough."

Stab, stab.

While the corpses at the entrance were receiving their equal share of stabbings, Yuri earned a brief moment to think.

If he stayed still like this, he would be stabbed and die. If that happened in this body, would he return to his original world?

No. He already knew the answer.

'If you die, you die!'

That damn Lorelia had said so with a refreshing smile.

Naturally, Yuri did not want to die.

Stab!

The knife, which had been making its way through the room, pierced the corpse next to him. A quick glance revealed it was Jang-sam.

"Ah, why is this bastard so tough?"

The younger brother who’d been dragging his foot was right beside him. Yuri couldn’t hesitate anymore.

All he’d be achieving by staying still like this was letting out a scream.

He couldn't just lie here. The stab was coming either way, and pretending to be a corpse would only get him so far. He could picture the sharp pain and the involuntary scream, followed by a few more deliberate thrusts until he went silent for good.

The only thing he needed was resolve.

Slash!

He grabbed the man’s ankle and slashed deep into his tendon.

“GAAAH! WHAT THE—?!”

The man's imagination was not vivid enough to predict that a bloody corpse would suddenly rise from the dead to attack him. Worse still, the wound was terrible enough to make him lose his balance and collapse onto the floor.

Yuri rolled to his feet, staggering as he raised the dagger and cautiously backed away.

Only then could he see the faces of the brothers who had entered the office.

The Oh brothers.

They were thugs from the east who’d started muscling into Oldor’s alleys, recruiting scum to build their own crew. These brutal and dangerous men had started encroaching into the Black Snake Gang’s territory, but Yuri had never dared to meet their gaze before.

"AGHHHH. MY FOOT!"

A scream tore through Oh Bong-seek as he collapsed, clutching his bleeding ankle.

His older brother, Oh Bong-chun, didn’t move. He remained rigid, his glare fixed on Yuri. It wasn’t just caution that held him back, he simply didn’t care about his brother enough to take action right away.

"Hey, kid. What are you?"

Oh Bong-chun was just as bloodstained as his brother, but he had no serious injuries. He pulled a handaxe from his belt and grinned, revealing yellowed teeth.

"This is strange... Everyone here should be dead, or at least not as unharmed as you."

"Hyung, you bastard! M-my ankle!"

Oh Bong-seok screamed, but Oh Bong-chun didn't even glance at him. He narrowed his slit-like eyes further and scrutinised Yuri.

"I asked what you are. You're not one of my guys, so you must be with the Black Snake Gang. But why don't you have a single scratch on you? Huh? Were you hiding somewhere?"

What should he say? No, did he even need to answer? Yuri simply kept his mouth shut.

Oh Bong-seok couldn't get up, so the only one he had to deal with was Oh Bong-chun.

"Hey, you scared?"

Oh Bong-chun asked with a smirk towards the silent Yuri.

It was an obvious provocation, and Yuri didn't fall for it. The situation itself was too tense to care about such taunts. One wrong move and he could die less than 10 minutes after transmigration.

Thump, thump, thump...

His heart was pounding as if it would burst.

He was constantly aware of the dagger clutched in his right hand, but Su-hyeok had never held a knife for anything else other than chopping onions.

Yuri was different. The bastard had brandished a knife to threaten people many times and had even stabbed someone before. However, those memories weren't much help in overcoming the current situation.

"Hoo..."

Since the dagger in his hand felt awkward, Yuri let out a short sigh and dropped it to the floor.

"What the??"

Oh Bong-chun's eyes went wide.

"Don't even try surrendering by throwing away your knife. You know, I'm still that idiot's older brother. Why should I spare the guy who's going to make my brother useless for the rest of his life?"

Instead of answering, Yuri raised both hands.

"Is this bastard crazy?"

Oh Bong-chun burst out laughing.

He couldn't understand why he would throw away a perfectly good knife only to not even beg for their life.

"What are you going to do with those hands? Think you’re some kind of martial arts master? Wanna shatter this axe with your fists or something?"

He let the taunts slide.

Honestly, if he could, he would use the dagger, as facing an axe with bare hands didn't seem possible.

But he had no choice.

The old Yuri might have known a thing or two about knife fighting, however the current Yuri was far more accustomed to being bare-handed.

He had learned how to use his fists by taking a beating.

"You fucking bastard, how dare you look down on me?!"

With a roar, Oh Bong-chun charged in, swung his axe, and… died.

"H-Hyung?"

Oh Bong-seok, who was clutching his bleeding ankle, muttered in disbelief, but his older brother, whose neck was broken and tongue was lolling out, couldn't give him an answer.

"This actually works..."

Yuri nodded, looking down at the hand that had so casually broken a neck.

Footnotes:

Hyung/Hyungnim: "Hyung" (형) is what a male calls an older male. "Hyungnim" (형님) is the more formal and respectful version.

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