I Became the Mad Demon in a Novel - Chapter 2

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: DereKimchi

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Became the Mad Demon in a Novel ◈

Chapter 2: Silent Aeon Demon Soul

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When people are overwhelmed with panic, their minds can paradoxically grow calm.

So.

I had carelessly clicked the final chapter of Mad Heaven Records and fallen into a martial arts world.

Could something this absurd really happen?

Then what about my job? My parents?

More importantly, could I even go back?

“No...”

It was too ridiculous.

The Mad Heaven Records minor gallery was clearly visible before my eyes.

And the intensely blue sky stretching out before me was real.

First, I needed to get some information somehow.

The Gallers had urged people to read it so insistently. It had to be helpful, at least a little.

With trembling hands, I tapped the pinned notice at the top of the gallery.

Title: Welcome, Newbies.

You probably think this is all a lie, right?

It’s fine. I did too.

Like you guessed, this is the martial arts world inside the novel Mad Heaven Records.

And I can’t explain it, but it seems the gallery crossed over with us too.

It may seem like a ray of hope in this hopeless situation, but it’s nothing like that.

This fucking gallery nearly got me killed more than once.

You know that saying from martial arts stories, right?

To make your way through the dusty jianghu, you have to be most wary of the elderly, women, and children.

Forget all that.

Just remember that fellow Gallers are the most dangerous people around.

Why?

We all fell into this martial arts world together. Do you think anyone would feel guilty about harming others in the bodies they possessed?

This is clearly reality now, but there are crazy bastards everywhere who still treat it like a game.

Your silver. Your weapon. Your life.

If you want to protect what matters, never let anyone discover you’re a Galler, no matter what.

Since we’re doomed never to return anyway, plenty of people have snapped and decided to live however they please.

There are four thousand people like that. No, a final chapter with no comments would look suspicious, so newcomers will just keep coming.

Fuck. I mourn you in advance. Hard.

“F-fuck.”

It pissed me off, like the writer was teasing an adorable newbie.

Going by the context, it sounded as though every reader who clicked the final chapter had been transported to this martial arts world.

Which meant...

The final chapter I had seen had 17,441 views.

Since this notice had been written, some thirteen thousand more devilish bastards had joined them.

Everything went dark, but I barely managed to calm myself and read the next part.

Don’t move carelessly.

Until you figure out the identity of the body you possessed, never move carelessly.

The thing we people who traveled by car and subway have lost most is a realistic sense of distance.

You’ve probably read enough martial arts novels to have heard of counties and provinces.

Remember this.

Those little counties authors use to describe villages are roughly the size of Gyeonggi Province.

Naturally, provinces are larger than the Korean Peninsula.

All that stuff about flying back and forth from Anhui to Hebei with lightness arts is complete bullshit.

So leaving your county is practically the same as gambling with your life.

Why else do you think those Three Kingdoms idiots were so proud of their hometowns, shouting, “How dare you stand before Zhang Fei of Yan!” and “I am Zhao Zilong of Changshan!”?

It was probably their first time leaving home too.

“...”

What was I, some Kim Jeong-ho with the Daedongyeojido, that I could walk across an area the size of the Korean Peninsula?

In a martial arts world where carts and carriages were the only means of transportation.

And unless you were someone important, you probably couldn’t even dream of riding in a carriage.

My chest felt even tighter at the thought that I was truly fucked.

As you can guess, the most important thing is your identity.

But think about it.

Given the size of the Central Plains, its population has to be close to a hundred million. What are the odds that you’ll possess someone with an easy life?

Even Mount Hua Sect, the greatest sect under heaven, barely has three hundred members when you include its lay disciples.

Think you can get in there just because you got lucky?

Of course, most Gallers possess lowly people living miserable lives.

One person possessed a courtesan in a red-light district and had to deal with huge, dark figures every single day... Fuck, I’d pay to unsee that.

“Whew...”

For the first time since arriving in this insane martial arts world, I felt relieved.

No matter how I looked at it, this was a man’s body.

At least my sex hadn’t changed.

Of course, I’d heard rumors that some Gallers had hit the jackpot by possessing actual characters.

But what does it mean if there’s no proof? It means it’s bullshit.

Remember this.

If someone struts around as though they’ve seized incredible fortune, or approaches you first claiming they’ll share their know-how, it’s a scam ninety-nine percent of the time.

They’ll get you into a sect?

They’ll share an internal energy manual?

They just want your life and your silver.

There was even a bastard who lured in dozens of Gallers and sold them to the Demonic Cult as experimental subjects for a Grand Art.

In return, the Demonic Cult’s Venerables probably taught them an advanced demonic art.

Fucking bastard. I’m jealous as hell.

...Was this bastard not normal either?

The more I read, the more the posts I had just seen in the gallery sent shivers down my spine.

So even that post claiming to sell the Plum Blossom Qi Art could have been a scam?

But was this world of Mad Heaven Records truly hell for us?

Not necessarily.

Why? Because we were readers who had read Mad Heaven Records all the way to the end.

If you’re a real reader, you can surely use your knowledge from reading it through to hit it big. Plenty of people have succeeded already.

Ah, but the absolute worst kind is the Galler who clicked the final chapter out of curiosity.

My condolences.

Your survival rate approaches zero percent.

“Huh?”

My heart dropped.

My condolences.

A survival rate of zero percent.

I was exactly that worst-case example.

Out of its massive thousand chapters, I had read barely two hundred. I skipped the rest and only checked the ending in the final chapter.

No. I didn’t even know that ending.

The instant I clicked it, I ended up like this.

“Why didn’t I read it?!”

Cold sweat poured down like rain.

The other Gallers had strategy knowledge built up from carefully reading hundreds of chapters, but I had nothing.

I had no way of knowing who would betray whom, where hidden opportunities lay, or even what point in the novel this was.

Lastly.

Don’t abandon hope.

This gallery isn’t always overflowing with shitposts.

Sometimes valuable information gets posted, and there are Gallers who genuinely act in good faith.

Before demonic bastards appeared and stabbed everyone in the back, we all got along quite well.

Learn martial arts and strike it rich, everyone.

As you know, in the world of Mad Heaven Records, martial arts are god and invincible.

The jianghu may be hell for the weak, but isn’t it a playground for masters? Heh heh heh.

Damn it. I should have read the whole thing before coming here.

Could someone who had read only around two hundred chapters survive among people like this?

My hands and feet were trembling so badly I thought I would go insane.

For now.

I hurriedly searched my body.

Before long, I felt something hard inside my sleeve.

When I pulled it out, it was fortunately a money pouch.

I opened it and found it fairly full of silver.

“I-I’m saved!”

There were more than twenty pieces of silver at a glance.

As long as no one stole them, I would have no trouble eating and sleeping for a while.

Wait.

Could someone of lowly status really carry twenty pieces of silver on them?

“Huh?”

Only then did I realize I was carrying something on my back.

What was this? A bundle?

I slipped my shoulders free and untied the straps. It wasn’t an ordinary bundle.

It was a fairly thick piece of cloth tightly wrapped around something.

Something long, almost certainly a weapon.

“Whoa!”

When I unwrapped the cloth, a weapon appeared. A sword.

Its scabbard gleamed as smoothly as glass.

Beneath its surface, intricate patterns shifted ever so slightly, like the veins of a living creature.

With trembling hands, I slowly drew the sword.

“Huh?”

The exposed blade was a translucent black.

A chill poured from it.

It felt as though a solid block of ice had touched my skin.

“W-what is this?”

Whether I looked at its hilt or blade, this was absolutely no ordinary sword.

Then...

KRAAAANG!

Something exploded inside my head.

My closed mouth opened wide on its own.

Visions of severing someone’s neck and piercing their heart expanded across my sight in layers.

The strange ecstasy I had felt while turning living people into chunks of meat.

The world flashed red.

The peaceful sounds of the forest had somehow become screams and the deafening crash of clashing blades.

Kill!

An unfamiliar voice scratched through my mind.

“Urgh!”

Everything I saw looked like a target.

Something to drive into deeply.

Something to smash and cut.

Something to pry open and sever.

Something to carve away and twist.

The entire world reflected on my retinas had become something that needed to be dismantled.

“W-what is this?!”

I hurriedly hurled the sword to the ground.

My heart pounded without pause.

What was that?

A demonic sword?

A sword that showed such visions?

No, more importantly, why was a sword this horrifying inside my bundle?

“Could this body belong to a martial artist?”

I clutched at my racing heart and slowly inspected my body.

When I took off my upper garment, I found impossible scars everywhere.

“C-crazy!”

My skin was like old hide that had been torn apart and stitched back together thousands of times.

The first thing I saw was a long sword scar cutting across the center of my chest.

It began at my left shoulder and cut deeply down to my right flank.

The raised scar tissue twitched grotesquely whenever my chest rose and fell.

This was not merely a cut through flesh.

It was a terrible wound that seemed to have shattered several ribs completely.

It was a miracle my heart had not been split in two.

“Holy shit.”

My abdomen was even worse.

Had it been seared with red-hot iron?

At the horrible marks tangled like a net around my navel, I could only freeze in a daze.

What kind of person had I possessed?

Then something fell from my loosened clothes with a soft thud.

“Huh...?”

Demon.

A small jade token bearing only that one character in intaglio.

But the moment I saw it, my entire body stiffened.

“C-could it be... the Demonic Cult?”

My eyes instinctively returned to the sword lying at my feet.

Wait.

If this was a demonic sword that radiated an all-pervading chill and let its wielder see every gap and seam in the world the moment they grasped it...

“S-S-Silent Aeon Demon Soul!”

There was no doubt.

One of the strongest figures in the world of Mad Heaven Records, and the greatest fiend the Demonic Cult had ever produced.

All signs pointed to only one person.

“This is insane!”

The Mad Demon, Yuk Jin-gwang.

A colossal villain who had driven the protagonist Han Yubaek to death’s door throughout the original story, a literal “walking calamity.”

The Demonic Cult’s strongest master, whom even the Heavenly Demon had wholeheartedly acknowledged.

It was the Mad Demon.

“The Mad Demon? I’m the Mad Demon?!”

I thought my life had gone to shit.

Yet somehow, I had hit the jackpot.