I was Born in the Final Demon Realm of a Dark Fantasy

————————————————————

As a trait that can be linked with the [Hidden Bloodline] trait, I recommend the [Cruel Adaptation] trait.

-When fighting with a strong being for a certain period of time, your body adapts and increases growth stats (up to 10%).

-When fighting with a strong being, skill proficiency greatly increases.

10% might not sound impressive, but since Grey Dawn is a place where endless battles with stronger opponents occur, this is a good trait that allows continuous growth.

Above all, when possessed along with the [Hidden Bloodline] trait, the maximum growth stat increase rate doubles, making it a trait that shines even more when taken together.

With this combination, you’ll have superior specs compared to other builds in the late game.

The [Cruel Adaptation] trait often appears in-game in the form of enlightenment.

————————————————————

It took me two years to defeat Ger.

But I couldn’t be satisfied with just beating Ger.

The longing that remained within me was still unfulfilled.

“What are you going to do with me?”

“What would I do?”

But suddenly a thought occurred to me.

Would this trauma engraved in my soul really disappear if I gained their recognition?

It was a path I had already walked once.

Using loneliness as fuel to move forward.

And how did that turn out in the end?

Did the loneliness disappear?

Looking at what I was doing now, it was too easy to see that it hadn’t.

Moving forward alone was meaningless.

So what was the answer?

I didn’t know exactly, but this time I decided to try caring for those around me.

I chose Ger as my first step in this practice.

In this place, inhabited by people more ignorant than barbarians, strength was power.

There was a culture where if someone overpowered another with strength, it was calmly accepted.

Since I had defeated Ger who had bullied me, the villagers didn’t care at all what I did to him.

In the end, the reason I was ostracized in the village was because my strength was unusually weak compared to my peers.

“I’ll win soon anyway, but until then, I’ll accept it if you bully me.”

“Why would I bully you?”

I did step on his head and ask how he felt, but that would be absent from the memory of the unconscious guy.

I brazenly said:

“Let’s be friends.”

“…Friends?”

“Yeah, we’re about the same age.”

Ger spoke with an uneasy expression.

“I don’t want someone like…”

“What?”

When I raised my fist, Ger couldn’t say anything more.

And that’s how we became friends.

Hmm, should be fine, right?

In my past life it might have been different, but here, this is a world where strength determines everything.

♦♦♦

This underdeveloped village had far too many thugs.

Compared to them, Ger was closer to a normal kid. Just someone who played the role of a gang leader among children.

I decided to deal with the neighborhood thugs one by one along with Ger.

“Ah, but those guys travel in groups, so we should be careful.”

“You know.”

“Why me? I don’t have much bad blood with those guys.”

“We’re friends. You didn’t think I’d fight them alone, did you?”

“…”

My newly made friend was quite reassuring.

We joined forces and decided to deal with the thugs one by one.

Ger would keep watch, and I would issue the challenge.

The first opponent we chose seemed to be the weakest among the thug group. Of course, “weak” was only relative within the thug group.

He had a similar build to Ger and me, who had already grown to nearly adult-sized bodies.

We targeted a moment when he was alone and blocked his path.

“What do you want?”

The thug looked at us blandly after we suddenly blocked his way.

I extended my fist without saying a word.

And in the blink of an eye, I took a punch that filled my vision and was knocked out.

An adult’s strength was on a completely different level compared to Ger.

It was an even higher wall than when I first faced Ger.

When I was knocked out with one blow, Ger froze awkwardly on the spot.

The thug’s gaze turned to Ger.

“Ah, I was just dragged here by him… Hyung, you know my face, right?”

The thug wouldn’t care about such things.

Ger also got beaten and passed out.

We retreated to the mountains for closed-door training.

Ger was tight-lipped, with one eye bruised dark blue.

His expression was full of resentment.

He seemed quite frustrated about passing out after taking one hit from the thug.

“Training is the best when you’re frustrated.”

“…We’re already screwed. Those guys will have marked us.”

“You’re giving up after one defeat? Were you only worth that much?”

“That’s not the kind of frustration I mean…”

“This won’t do. Put up your fists.”

How long would it take this time to defeat just the weakest thug?

It was meaningless to worry about that already.

Once you decide to win, you just do it.

Until you actually win.

The more complicated the thoughts, the more meaningless they became.

‘Though I don’t intend to become as stupid as these guys.’

For six months, I trained my body with Ger every day, exchanging punches with each other.

It was time to rebuild our foundation until we could at least gauge our opponent through a few exchanges.

“Ah, there’s something frustrating about this.”

“You felt it too?”

One day, Ger sat down and lowered his head in the middle of sparring with me.

Something feels frustrating.

That feeling was an emotion I had been experiencing for several months.

A vague frustration.

Ger spoke blankly.

“Could this be the wall?”

“The wall? What’s that?”

“My father told me something. He said that when martial arts reach a certain level, you’ll face an enormous wall that seems insurmountable. To break through that wall easily, you need to learn systematic martial arts.”

“Are you saying we’ve already faced that wall?”

“Isn’t that what this is?”

That seemed like an unreasonable expectation.

After all, if that were the case, why couldn’t we even properly face a single thug?

“Hmm, maybe our bodies can’t keep up with our experience?”

“Experience?”

“Well, we’ve been fighting and exchanging blows every day for years.”

“Others do that too, though.”

“That’s true… Then maybe we have extraordinary talent?”

One corner of my mouth twisted.

“If you fall into such optimistic thinking, further development will be difficult.”

“Isn’t thinking we can beat those alley guys already optimistic thinking?”

“Your sarcasm skills have improved a lot.”

“I learned it all from you.”

I looked at Ger with a meaningful smile.

“I was thinking of teaching you something more.”

Ger hurriedly waved his hands.

“I’m good.”

“No, you’re not.”

In the end, we went back to find the thugs without breaking through that wall.

This time, coincidentally, two of them were together.

Ger and I decided to take on one each.

But we lost without even exchanging three blows.

“How do you learn systematic martial arts?”

“Obviously we can’t learn it here. We need to catch a warrior’s eye and become his disciples. And there are no warriors here.”

In the end, we had no choice but to walk that daunting path.

Another year passed.

During that time, we challenged the same opponents countless times and were defeated.

By now, they realized that we were trying to defeat them.

So when we challenged them, we would get beaten nearly to death.

There was a time when a thug hit my face so hard that I was buried deep under a pile of rocks.

I had to clear it away myself after regaining consciousness. It was quite a miserable feeling.

Then one day.

While reviewing a battle with a thug, I suddenly gained some insight.

It was like…

Sudden.

Why hadn’t I thought of this before?

My usual stance when throwing a punch. My stepping foot. How I maintained my center of gravity and the habit of changing it. My breathing. The thoughts I had at those moments.

Everything felt new.

If I just changed it a little.

Very subtly, just a tiny bit.

If I changed just that much, everything would be different, and a new world would unfold.

But that sensation was vague.

So how exactly do I make that small change?

I concentrated on finding that answer.

I focused solely on finding that answer, forgetting everything else.

Nothing around me registered in my vision.

Day after day. I stood in that spot, slowly extending my fist, contemplating my posture and breathing.

And when I found that answer.

In that moment, my entire body trembled. An ecstatic joy enveloped my whole body.

The frustrating wall that had filled my vision crumbled in an instant, and beyond it was a refreshing and liberating feeling, like a new horizon unfolding.

Only then did I notice my surroundings.

“Do you know you’ve been standing here motionless for two weeks?”

As I looked around, that’s what Ger said to me.

Then, the hunger I had forgotten came crashing like a wave.

Ger handed me food, seemingly having prepared it in advance.

“Did you break through the wall?”

“I think so.”

“I’m envious.”

“You’ll be next soon. I promise.”

And truly, just a few months later, Ger also broke through his wall.

In the meantime, I went to find the thug whom I had been defeated by dozens of times and beat him up.

It was such an easy victory that I couldn’t understand why I had struggled so much before.

The news spread quickly throughout the alleys, and eventually, they all banded together and invaded the mountain where Ger and I always trained.

And together with Ger, who had broken through his wall, we beat them all down.

Ger shouted excitedly.

“Now the back alleys are ours!”

I lightly struck the back of Ger’s head.

♦♦♦

And indeed, the back alleys became ours.

Those who were defeated no longer defied us. Becoming their leaders was a natural progression.

The first thing we did was to make them stop all their thug activities.

And made them focus on training.

I had no intention of ruling over them.

Around that time, I was pondering what martial arts really were.

There were no more worthy opponents left in this underdeveloped village.

So naturally, I became interested in those known as “warriors.”

But I didn’t know where they were or how to find them.

I couldn’t just leave aimlessly toward a vague goal.

So I spent time trying to systematically organize the experience I had gained from real battles.

This too was a very difficult task, seeming almost impossible to grasp.

“Boss, there’s still two years until the coming-of-age ceremony.”

Ger had been calling me boss ever since we took over the back alleys.

I told him not to call me that, but it seemed like he wanted to feel good about it, so I decided to let it be.

The coming-of-age ceremony Ger mentioned wasn’t anything special.

It was just an occasion where those becoming adults in the same year gathered to compete on who could hunt more beasts. Adults would drink and place bets on this.

It wasn’t particularly my interest.

I said to Ger:

“I want to become a warrior, but I wonder if there’s a way?”

“…Hmm, isn’t there no other way except to find them directly? They won’t come here.”

It was time to leave this village.

That’s what I thought.

But the village rules were an obstacle.

“You can’t leave the village without completing the coming-of-age ceremony.”

“I know. It doesn’t matter. I’ll do it this year.”

“Really?”

You could undertake the coming-of-age ceremony even if you weren’t of age.

Though rare, there had been a few who attempted it.

There was no reason we couldn’t do it.

Several months passed, and Ger and I underwent the coming-of-age ceremony.

The villagers, who had not seen me since I took over the back alleys and had probably dismissed it as a baseless rumor, looked at me with bewildered eyes when I appeared for the ceremony.

I departed with eight other children to cross the mountains surrounding the village to hunt beasts.

The mountains around the village were extremely familiar to me.

I found beasts wherever I went.

I caught so many that transporting them became more challenging.

Eventually, when I returned to the village, I dragged thirty beast carcasses tied with ropes.

When I arrived, the villagers’ gazes turned toward me.

Bewilderment, shock, and disbelief in their expressions.

It was the highest record in the history of the coming-of-age ceremony. Moreover, it was an achievement at an age where I still had two years before becoming an adult.

Even the children who arrived later than me hadn’t caught thirty beasts.

They no longer had dismissive looks for me.

I had achieved the goal I had initially set.

But I didn’t feel much excitement.

Because my perspective had gradually changed over time.

My goal had already shifted to leaving this village and becoming a warrior.

The day after completing the coming-of-age ceremony, I immediately left the village with Ger.

“They say when we go to another village, they’ll immediately recognize we’re from this village and look down on us. Something about smelling like cheap stones? So should we roll around in the forest before going there?”

Ger seemed to be seriously considering it.

“There’s no need. Those dismissive looks will change quickly.”

“…Well, if you say so.”

Ger now nodded without a doubt.

His attitude was so natural that I inwardly chuckled.