Transferred to an SSS-rank Production Class

True to his inebriated state, the king’s words lacked coherence, but they only served to further confirm his status as an utterly despicable human being. I swallowed the curses that had risen to the tip of my tongue with great difficulty.

‘I had guessed from the years mentioned, but that woman must have been Baek-a’s mother.’

According to the king’s account, the woman who held her head high as if she were the heavens themselves introduced herself as the last medium in all the land. The moment the king heard this, he tried to behead her, but strangely, any metal object that came near her would melt into a viscous liquid.

Standing on the floor drenched in molten metal, the woman reportedly said:

“O bloodline of the covenant, I implore you to halt your steps.”

A warning followed that if the balance were further disturbed, irreversible consequences would ensue. However, the king was incapable of grasping the weight of those words. Instead, he flew into a rage, demanding how a mere medium dared to give him orders.

There were many ways to take a human life without blades. But as if protected by divine grace, all malicious intent seemed to miss the woman.

Even the deadliest poisons turned to clear water at her touch, and fierce beasts would affectionately nuzzle against her. That wasn’t all. If they tried to drown her, lotus flowers would suddenly bloom and lift her from the water. When they attempted to bury her, the loose soil would harden like steel, making it impossible to dig.

Moreover, anyone harboring ill intentions towards her couldn’t even lay a hand on her, making her as impregnable as a fortress. But even this had a loophole.

“However, I was the exception. After all, how could a mere medium be on equal footing with the bloodline of the covenant, no matter how much the gods favored her?”

“So then…”

“Though her status as a medium was troublesome, her appearance was quite alluring. Thanks to that, she received undeserved royal favor. Wasn’t she a lucky woman?”

His euphemism for “royal favor” was little more than a thinly veiled admission of rape. Unaware of my icy gaze, the king continued with a grin.

“But even I couldn’t kill her. Yet keeping her around felt unsettling, so I showered her with affection for a while before confining her to the shrine on Yeongwol Mountain.”

The king learned of the woman’s pregnancy through those monitoring the shrine but paid little heed. He had no intention of acknowledging a child of medium lineage as royalty.

However, this nonchalance was short-lived. Before long, the king found himself visiting the shrine of his own accord. A nameless plague had begun to spread along with whispered rumors.

“If not for that mongrel of unknown origin, how could this have happened?”

The king insisted that the woman was the source of the plague, but her warning about “disturbing the balance” seemed more suspect to me. However, the blindly obstinate king tormented the woman daily, frequenting the shrine.

He even had the audacity to boast about showing the last shred of humanity by sending physicians each season, making his words increasingly difficult to stomach.

‘He’s thick-skinned enough to plead for leniency while bragging. I suppose he doesn’t even consider this among his wrongdoings. No, he probably thinks it was justified since he was persecuting the alleged cause of the plague.’

As the moon waned and the woman’s belly swelled, the situation grew even more dire. Yokai, drawn by the scent of plague and death, began scaling the city walls at all hours, turning the place into a living hell.

“The wicked medium must have been carrying the seed of calamity. If the child in her womb had truly been of the covenant’s bloodline, such misfortune would never have befallen us.”

Write a novel, why don’t you? Instead of trying to manage the crisis, you fixated on an innocent person, and that’s why the country ended up in this state. If we’re pointing fingers, wouldn’t the incompetent king be closer to the seed of calamity than an unborn child?

‘I’ve never met someone so utterly lacking in self-awareness.’

I fell silent, at a loss for words, but the king misinterpreted this as agreement and raised his voice even further.

“The plague flower on my face is proof of this! This horrific stain appeared after I came into contact with that child!”

The woman, who had received inadequate care both before and after childbirth, breathed her last immediately after giving birth. The heartless king threw the infant into the river before the woman’s body had even grown cold.

“Why specifically the Cheonhwa River?”

“Doesn’t the Cheonhwa River originate from Cheonsan, shaped by the Heavenly Emperor? It was an unavoidable choice to extinguish the calamity.”

“And it just happened to be on a Sak month night when the river flows backwards, so there couldn’t have been a more appropriate day, right?”

The king nodded in affirmation, baring his teeth in a grin. He said the child was the spitting image of its mother, and since others couldn’t harm it, he had no choice but to act personally.

‘And you claimed to want a land solely for humans.’

As if to denounce his hypocrisy of seeking the gods only when it suited him, the plague flower appeared on the king’s face the very next morning. Perhaps recalling that moment, the king’s smile faded, and he furrowed his brow.

“How can the gods be so indifferent to the bloodline of the covenant? I’m different from those insect-like humans! How could they inflict the plague on me…”

What goes around comes around. It was clear that he didn’t understand even this simple principle.

Midway through speaking, the king’s shoulders began to shake as he struggled to control his emotions. Eventually, with eyes unnervingly wide, he continued his twisted logic.

“So if I’m guilty, then all eighteen thousand gods who abandoned me are guilty too!”

“My, you seem to feel quite wronged?”

“Of course I do! If not for this terrible plague, would I have dared to covet the seat of a god? It was all done for our survival.”

He even began to argue, asking if I understood his constant fear of being dragged to the Western Garden of Flowers at any moment. Then, in a display of his unsound mind, he abruptly changed the subject and asked me what it felt like to live an eternal life.

‘How would I know that?’

Once again interpreting my silence as he pleased, the king’s eyes brimmed with undisguised envy. His expression wasn’t much different from Lee Kang-to when praising his tail.

As I let him ramble on about what he’d like to do if he became a god, I considered what other information I needed to extract from him.

The arrogant king sought to remove divine influence to make On entirely his own. Baek-a was the daughter of a medium who came to warn him. The king, who had abandoned Baek-a as an infant, suddenly sought out his youngest daughter a few years ago.

‘And then he sent Baek-a to the underworld to retrieve some object.’

While each revelation was shocking, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we hadn’t reached the core of the matter. After all, there was still one name that hadn’t come up.

‘Arajin, Commander of the Royal Guards.’

Now that I knew the circumstances surrounding the disappearance, I didn’t necessarily need to dig deeper, but it kept nagging at me. No matter how I looked at it, this person seemed to hold the key to the whole affair.

Hadn’t I learned from the last quest that even the smallest doubts shouldn’t be overlooked? Clicking my tongue, I shook off the king’s hand clutching my robe. Then I stood up immediately, looking down at the king with cold eyes.

“I clearly told you to confess your sins to me, yet you dare to accuse others of wrongdoing.”

The king, who had been ranting in his emotional state, seemed to read the displeasure in my tone and trembled slightly. Yes, if he couldn’t read the atmosphere even now, there would be a big problem.

“It would be all too easy to blind your eyes. Despite giving you one last chance, you persist in denying your sins to the end.”

“I-I have only spoken the truth!”

“You sought to become a god merely to escape the plague. So you claim that the gods who allowed this to happen are also guilty. Is that not what you said?”

Where do you think you’re going? As he tried to inch backward, taking advantage of my words, I stepped on his sleeve to prevent his movement. Rendered immobile, the king quickly changed tactics and grabbed my ankle again.

“It’s unjust to place all the blame on me! If not for the plague, I wouldn’t have committed any sins, and you, death’s messenger, wouldn’t have come so early!”

“If not for the plague, you say.”

“Yes. The plague, the plague, that cursed plague! It’s all because of that, so please don’t reproach me!”

The king cried out, beating his chest. I bent down, grasped his chin, and examined his face from various angles. I had hoped it might look different up close, but his visage, marred by the plague flower and greed, remained as repulsive as ever.

“How pathetic.”

“What do you…”

“Surely you’re not going to blame the plague for neglecting your kingly duties, indulging in debauchery, and bleeding your people dry?”

The king, concerned only with his own perceived injustice, tried to argue against this as well, but upon meeting my eyes, he closed his mouth again. How many people had suffered because of this utterly insignificant human?

I tried my best to suppress my emotions, but I couldn’t help the sharpness in my words.

“Is it also our fault that you murdered innocents and sent the infant you abandoned back to the underworld once more? What about binding the hands and feet of your daughter, who could have become the greatest warrior of all time?”

“Didn’t I tell you? If only there had been no plague from the start!”

“It’s not the plague, but your absence that would have prevented all this from happening.”

Betrayal flashed across the king’s face, as if he had believed I would take his side. Inwardly mocking him, I slipped my hand into my sleeve.

‘It was wise to get the yokai essence from Lee Kang-to in advance.’

I planned to bring up Arajin while presenting this.

Just as I was about to summon the bead from my inventory onto my hand, something began frantically pounding on my shoulder. The sudden, forceful impact nearly knocked me off balance, but I managed to steady myself.

The only person who would do such a thing was Lee Kang-to. What was he doing? Following this, even the goblin, who had been quiet all this time, let out a scream-like shout.

“Mr. Kim, that… that monstrosity!”

“What?”

At the same moment, the king’s face suddenly lit up as if he had found a rope descending from heaven. I could tell at a glance that this was not a good omen for me.

Is there something behind me? I couldn’t sense any presence.

Wrapped in confusion, I tried to turn around. Or rather, I would have if an unknown hand hadn’t gripped my shoulder with enough force to crush it.

Then came a deep voice.

“Your Majesty.”

Why? Even though I hadn’t seen him, I instinctively realized that the person standing behind me was none other than Arajin.

In truth, it wasn’t just my shoulder that was caught. The aura of a being on a different level suppressed my entire body. The pressure I felt was comparable to when I had argued with Choi Kwon-young about renewing our contract.

‘If you encounter someone with heterochromia in the palace, leave the place immediately without delay.’

It was at this moment that I finally understood why Sa Mok-yeong had warned us just a few hours ago.