WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Our Precious Demon King ◈
Chapter 12: Abuse of Power
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“It's back!”
His frozen mana core was working again.
Kim Junyong refined and stored the chaos mana he had drawn in earlier.
But...
Fssss.
Only a handful of chaos mana stayed inside. The rest scattered.
“It's freaking tiny.”
Junyong's vast mana core could hold an ocean, but right now, he could only put a bowlful into it.
He was both baffled and excited.
“So this is a dual core?”
He could clearly sense an Order Mana Core.
It was exactly the same size as his Chaos Mana Core.
The two cores connected as though each were chasing the other's tail, forming something like a yin-yang symbol.
Their sizes and shapes were identical.
As if they were keeping each other in balance.
“So the more white mana I develop, the more of my sealed dark mana gets released...”
That was certainly the only way a dual core could work.
If the balance tipped even slightly, the stronger mana would devour the other.
“Clever work, Scales.”
<Sheepish.>
Apparently, it liked the compliment.
Kim Junyong was about to examine the status window he had unlocked for the first time.
<You have acquired an awakening skill.>
<Kim Junyong>
Class: Guardian of the Scales
Mana: 8
Skills: Judgment
“What awakening skill did you get?”
“None.”
“Hm? Let me see yours.”
<Kim Remi>
Class: Swordfighter
Mana: null
Skills: null
“What the hell is this?”
“...”
Remi had no way of knowing either.
“I think the god of Earth just shoved you into the system.”
Remi was a devil.
She(?) had never received a blessing or anything else from Bel, but since the god of Earth controlled this virtual world, that god must have granted her access.
“You're a hunter in name only.”
Even the name wasn't Remi's true name. It was the hastily invented Kim Remi.
“And my evil karma score is... Oh!”
Kim Junyong's eyes lit up.
Two tiny white orbs sat on the scales of order.
“Do I get two for each kill? Or does the one you killed count too?”
“Wouldn't it count?”
“Why?”
“I was punished for killing people, so wouldn't this work the same way?”
“Oh!”
That sounded convincing.
Either way, they could test it.
“Kieeeeh.”
The farther they walked, the more often skeletons appeared. With permission to kill, Remi gleefully sent her sword dancing.
Clink, clink.
White orbs the size of millet grains poured down.
“Wow, that was fast.”
Even when Remi did the killing, his order score went up.
Remi was even more excited than Kim Junyong.
“From now on, why don't we visit a dungeon whenever we do something bad on Earth?”
“Your brain's been working pretty well lately, hasn't it?”
Kim Junyong grinned.
Crash!
As they climbed the hill, skeleton swordfighters and mages sprang out.
But they were no match for Remi.
“That's my Remi!”
Junyong wasn't just standing around while Remi hunted.
He tried out the first white magic skill he had ever acquired.
“Judgment.”
Clatter.
Golden scales appeared before a skeleton and weighed its evil karma.
<Minion of evil. Execute at once!>
A single black orb appeared on the dragon's pan, and the scales collapsed.
Clatter.
Then the golden dragon with its wings folded was released from its seal. It spread its wings wide, opened its jaws, and breathed fire.
Whoooosh.
“Kieeeh.”
The skeleton crumbled and vanished, and the scales disappeared.
“...”
Kim Junyong was stunned. The skill was far more powerful than he had expected.
“Why's it so strong?”
<Sacred relics imbued with a god's power are more effective against “devils.”>
It was like bonus damage against creatures from the Demon Realm.
“Not bad.”
Wow. More importantly...
Had returnees been using skills this easily all along?
“I barely managed to learn by watching other people...”
There was no need to study magical theory or understand how a spell worked. He just said the skill's name, and pop, it went off on its own.
Wasn't this the definition of one-click gameplay?
“Hmm.”
Kim Junyong could suddenly use both white magic and black magic, yet something about it rubbed him the wrong way.
Those returnees.
They'd had it easy.
No wonder they'd been so weak.
In any case, the dead skeleton's remaining mana flowed into him again, expanding his Order Mana Core.
His mana had risen to 16.
But his dark mana had also been unsealed up to 16.
When the core holding order mana grew, his chaos core grew too.
It really was double the growth.
“...Then shouldn't you do the hunting yourself?”
“Come on. There's no need for me to deal with every little pest.”
Koreans were a people of hard work, passion, and efficiency, building mountains one speck at a time. But Kim Junyong was in no hurry.
There was no need to live as though something were chasing him.
Drawing energy from emotions and refining it into mana was still horribly inefficient, but it was an almost limitless source of energy.
If he could get water anywhere, there was no need to obsess over stockpiling bottled water at home.
Kim Junyong was already far too strong to waste his life obsessing over getting stronger.
“Just leave the boss for me.”
“...As you command.”
Kim Remi cleared a path as ordered.
Countless monsters blocked their way, only to be sliced in half by Remi's blade.
Kim Junyong walked among the bones, observing and investigating.
‘To think my mana could grow this easily.’
The more he thought about it, the more incredible Bel's blessing seemed. It let people acquire magic without studying it.
A skeleton Remi had missed charged at him, so he smashed its skull.
Thoom!
His mana rose again.
The only slight nuisance was that the container grew larger, but the inside remained empty.
He had to fill that extra space with mana himself.
He could no longer extract mana from corpses either.
‘So that's how it works. It absorbs the corpse's remaining mana and energy as experience.’
That was the energy source that expanded his Order Mana Core.
While he was thinking, Remi had already reached the area near the top of their destination hill.
“Here's the boss.”
“Okay, I'll be right there.”
Junyong hurried over to find what had once been a death knight writhing on the ground with its arms and legs cut off.
[...You bastards... in my graveyard...]
Thoooom!
Kim Junyong didn't bother listening to its last words. He simply smashed its head.
Along with the explosion, a huge amount of energy flowed into him.
<Kim Junyong>
Class: Guardian of the Scales
Mana: 109
Skills: Judgment
“Bosses really are the best.”
Junyong smiled faintly and watched the changes around him.
The barrier marking the dungeon's boundary was rapidly shrinking. At its center was a cave halfway up the hill.
“There's the boss room.”
The cave was clearly a burial chamber.
The small interior held only a wooden coffin and a few odds and ends.
He picked up an old sword that held the most concentrated energy of anything there and examined it.
“So this is the dungeon core.”
“Shall I destroy it?”
“No, let's take it as a souvenir.”
He rejected the suggestion from Remi, whose first response to anything, living or not, was to kill it, and kept hold of the sword.
Then he spread out a crumpled wrapping cloth and gathered the gems, accessories, and other odds and ends in the burial chamber.
“I should hurry up and make a dungeon of my own.”
He couldn't even use something as common as subspace magic yet. At this rate, he really needed a porter.
He roughly tied up the cloth and handed it to Remi, who grumbled.
“Why don't you summon another devil to carry things?”
“Who?”
“Malsun?”
“Oh, I don't have anywhere near enough mana to summon Malsun.”
The amount of mana required for an initial summoning differed from devil to devil.
To gather that much mana, he would either have to expand his mana core enormously or go somewhere with plenty of emotional energy he could draw on immediately.
Unless he gathered tens of thousands of people and made them pour out fear or despair, summoning Malsun was impossible right now.
“Let's head back.”
“Yes.”
It was almost time to meet his older sister.
The two took their phones out of their pockets and tapped “Exit Dungeon,” which had replaced “Enter Dungeon.”
Pop-pop.
* * *
Cheon Yubeom was sweating.
Executive Director Kang Hyeonsik, who was in charge of this raid, was infamous for being a complete bastard. Of all the people the Daesan Guild could have sent, it had to be him.
“Look here, Team Leader Cheon. Do you see those?”
Kang Hyeonsik pointed at the line of support vehicles the Daesan Guild had sent.
There were food trucks, coffee trucks, and even trailers where the hunters could rest.
“I do.”
“We brought thirty hunters alone to run this operation in three shifts. Does it make sense for them to be sitting around twiddling their thumbs?”
“I'm sorry.”
“Ha, fuck. Do you think I'm saying this because I want an apology?”
“The Bureau will provide adequate compensation.”
“Fuck! Who asked you for money?”
Unable to contain his anger, Kang Hyeonsik shouted.
“...”
Cheon Yubeom had nothing to say.
All Yubeom could do was wait for this insufferable bastard to wear himself out and calm down.
“At least tell me who they are. Who are the bastards who dared sneak into the great Daesan Guild's dungeon? Huh?”
“I'm sorry.”
“No, why?”
He was the eldest grandson of the Daesan Group's chairman.
An aristocrat of the capitalist market.
Born into a wealthy business dynasty, he was a man who had never been denied anything he wanted.
Kang Hyeonsik stamped around in a rage.
“No, fucking hell. Did the president crawl in there? Was it some SR ranker? Who the fuck was it?”
“I'm sorry.”
“Sorry, sorry! Fucking sorry! Enough!”
Kang Hyeonsik huffed.
“...”
Cheon Yubeom's unshakable attitude only made him angrier.
What was the point of hitting something if it didn't even react?
‘Fine. Money? Let's see how much fucking compensation you offer.’
Kang Hyeonsik stared at Cheon Yubeom like a snake eyeing its prey.
“Haah. Fine. Your name was Cheon...”
“Cheon Yubeom.”
“Fine, Team Leader Cheon. If anyone can just come and go as they please, why do you sell those expensive exclusive rights?”
“I'm sorry.”
“Shouldn't you be managing this? Huh? Have you been taking all that money from guilds for exclusive rights, then secretly sending hunters in to steal the resources?”
“No.”
“Ha, fuck.”
Lee Mina, who had been listening quietly, finally stepped in.
“Excuse me.”
Surely this was going too far.
“Executive Director Kang. We admit that our side made a mistake. But aren't you taking this too far?”
“Stay out of it, you Grade 5 nobody.”
“Ha. Wh-what?”
Lee Mina thought she must have misheard him.
“This isn't a place for a bitch like you to butt in. Stay out of it. Are you deaf?”
“Ha... Hah!”
Lee Mina was too stunned to speak.
Not once since becoming an adult and entering the workforce had she been insulted so openly.
“Why? Are you going to compensate us? With what?”
Kang Hyeonsik smirked and looked her body up and down.
Lee Mina's face turned bright red with outrage.
“I've put up with you long enough.”
“What?”
Kang Hyeonsik stepped right up to Lee Mina.
She was a Grade 5 hunter.
Yet Kang Hyeonsik wasn't the slightest bit afraid.
The Daesan Guild.
And behind it, the Daesan Group.
They were what made him a predator.
Kang Hyeonsik grabbed Lee Mina by the collar.
“What can a civil servant bitch like you do?”
“Grrr.”
Lee Mina trembled.
One punch would turn him into a bloody mess.
But...
She couldn't throw it.
“Moron.”
“...”
Seeing her tremble helped ease his anger a little.
Then...
Rumble.
The black mass that had maintained its spherical shape began to ripple. Before the startled people could react, the black sphere shrank, then vanished like a bursting soap bubble with a pop.
The dungeon was gone.
“Wh-what? What the fuck?”
Hundreds of millions of won had just evaporated before his eyes.
Kang Hyeonsik grabbed Lee Mina's collar again.
And then...
Slice.
His hand was severed at the wrist.
“Huh? Huh? Aaaaargh!”
Before he could even understand what had happened, he was rolling on the ground in terrible pain.
“E-Executive Director!”
The Daesan Guild hunters hurried over and treated him.
As divine power seeped into him and the pain eased, Kang Hyeonsik grasped the situation clearly.
‘Someone cut off my hand?’
How dare they!
How fucking dare they!
“Fuck! Which bastard was it?!”
The eldest grandson of the Daesan Group.
Before this man, born to abuse his power...
“It was me, you bastard.”
...abuse of power itself descended.
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