Chapter 2

Becoming the Scumbag Third Prince of the Holy Imperial Family

Morres Klein was the third prince of the holy empire of Delcross. He was the bullheaded apple fallen far from the tree, the biggest shame the imperial family had ever had. Unlike his father, who was considered the most powerful holy emperor in history, this fat scumbag prince unfortunately inherited neither talent in sword fighting nor a pinch of holy power.

Most importantly, he was nothing like the calm and collected holy emperor. He had a short, fiery temperament and a vulgar demeanor that couldn’t simply be dismissed as the immaturity of a young prince. It wasn’t so unreasonable, then, that a few cardinals and high priests were concerned that Prince Morres wasn’t truthfully the holy emperor’s own blood.

But even for Prince Morres, who seemed doomed to forever be a scumbag, there was cause for change. One day, the prince suddenly fell sick with a terrible fever and suffered from a fever so high that he was between life and death. When he came to, he had become a completely different person.

Everyone thought, A near-death experience really changes you, and made nothing of it. But there was an untold reason that the prince had turned over a new leaf and become a new man. The man who had woken up in the body of the fevered and dying Morres was, in truth, a human from Earth called Lee Sungjin.

* * *

Lee Sungjin had been strangely tenacious ever since he was a child. Even as a baby, he was so stubborn that if he started something, he had to chase it to the bitter end. So, even though he was an only child, his parents had an extremely difficult time raising him.

“Who does he get his stubbornness from?” his mother asked with tears in her eyes, watching her son persist in sucking on a pacifier past the age of four. She was worried that his teeth would grow crooked, but fortunately, his baby teeth grew in evenly and neatly.

When he finally lost interest in pacifiers as a preschooler, he started insisting that he would not return home after classes. His parents tried to convince him with candy or his favorite TV shows, but none of it was effective. Sungjin was so averse to going home that the teachers of the preschool even grew suspicious that he was being abused at home. All his mother could do was smile awkwardly. Eventually, it became a routine for Sungjin’s parents to take turns roaming the playground with their son on their backs and returning home only late at night.

Once he entered elementary school, he became a bit more mature and his parents could finally breathe a sigh of relief, thinking that, at least now, he was old enough to understand what they were saying. That is, until they were called to school by his homeroom teacher the day after he brought home a box of crayons he’d taken from a classmate. The peace had been brief.

“He knocked over my crayons and broke all of them. So I took these instead.”

“Sungjin, I heard Hyungchul already apologized. It’s bad to take a classmate’s things by force.”

Sungjin squinted. “So he can just say sorry and it’s problem solved? What about my crayons?”

“Mommy can buy you more crayons, honey.”

“Hyungchul is the one who broke my crayons. Why should you have to replace them, Mom? He’s responsible for his own actions.”

Sungjin’s mother was at a loss for words at her son’s smart mouth. After all, he wasn’t wrong. She hesitated for a moment, then finally said, “Sungjin, the cost of some crayons is nothing compared to friendship with your classmates. From now on, when a friend apologizes, just accept it first, and if you’re still upset about it, talk to Mommy. We’ll figure out what to do together. How’s that?”

The child seemed dissatisfied but reluctantly nodded.

“Anyway, your crayons only had twenty-four colors. Why did you steal Hyungchul’s box of fifty-six crayons?”

“That’s compensation for my emotional damage. Of course I deserve something better.”

Sungjin’s mother couldn’t tell if her son was spiteful or intelligent.

After his peculiar childhood, Sungjin became a surprisingly quiet kid as a middle schooler. His parents cautiously kept an eye out for their slightly atypical son in case he was having a hard time adjusting to school life. Despite their worries, their son’s uniform and textbooks were always neat, and there were no signs of bullying whatsoever. Sungjin’s parents were overjoyed that their son had finally matured.

But Sungjin’s life was only calm on the surface. His school life was, in truth, abuzz with various incidents. Their son might have failed to acquire the average social skills that they wanted for him, but he’d acquired the skills to hide various incidents from his teachers and parents. For example, when he was unlucky enough to be targeted by bullies, he singled one of them out and beat him up for three months straight, making the bullies begrudgingly back off. When one of the student leaders picked on him for no reason, he stalked the kid for a week, causing him to develop such severe social anxiety and paranoia that he had to miss school for an extended period.

His life as a student was a turbulent one, landing somewhere between justice and crime. He wasn’t a very gifted student, but he was, all in all, a diligent one. He was accepted to a fine university in Seoul, had a fine romantic relationship, completed his military service as a sophomore, and got a job at a fine small business after graduation.

“Something’s off about that Manager Lee.”

“Really? Isn’t he hard-working and good at his job, too?”

Sometimes, an overbearing boss would grow suspicious of him, but outwardly, Sungjin was able to play the part of the industrious office worker reasonably well. People started introducing him to women and he started flirting with a colleague. If nothing major happened, he was going to marry a fine woman and live a regular life.

Then, in August 2035, the Gehena Gate Crisis occurred. Without any warning, star gates linked to the demonic world Gehena appeared all over Earth, allowing armies of thousands upon thousands of monsters to invade. Cities and other infrastructure that once stood tall came tumbling down in the blink of an eye. For many days, the world fell into a temporary state of anarchy. Hell had descended upon Earth, but some armies managed to form a line of defense, from which humanity regrouped and launched a counterattack. Nevertheless, human casualties in the first few days reached astronomical numbers. With most of the main cities on Earth destroyed, human civilization took one giant step backward.

Sungjin, who had been on a business trip to a rural town at the time, was luckily able to evacuate to an air-raid shelter within the defense line. However, he had still lost his family and his life had been completely uprooted all at once. But Sungjin did not cry in the face of this colossal tragedy that befell humanity. He simply remained calm and watched the endless stream of monsters descending from the gates, considering who owed him for his suffering this time. The monsters were countless, no matter how many humans managed to kill, but this tenacious man never gave up on a target of his choice.

Lee Sungjin became a hunter—a professional hunter of monsters. When a human killed a monster and put their hand on its corpse, their body soaked up a strange aura. The hunters called this a monster’s vital force. People who absorbed this were soon able to exercise superhuman powers as if they had absorbed a part of the monsters’ strength. Sometimes, the powers were simply astounding physical strength. Other times, the powers were fortifying, like developing a hard shell. Sometimes, it manifested as superpowers such as telekinesis.

The more monsters’ vital force a human hunter absorbed, the stronger they grew. Soon, there arose superhumans who could wipe out thousands of monsters on their own. Humanity, which had been brought to the brink of ruin, started slowly pushing the front lines forward. The demonic world had ambitiously invaded Earth, but after a few decades, it ended up collapsing along with it. Just as hunters grew stronger, monsters that killed humans grew stronger as well. The humans and monsters maintained a constant balance of power, leading to an irreversible attrition on both sides.

In the end, when the final superhuman army reached the demon king hiding away deep inside the core of the demonic world, the demon king had greeted them with a bored expression. He sighed and said, “Is this what it’s come to, then? What have I done for the past few decades? What a shame.”

Of course, the demon king’s dejection was no one’s concern. It was too late to pause the war of attrition and catch their breath now. Both sides had almost nothing left. One side had to meet complete obliteration. That was all that was left between the demonic world and humanity.

Despite the air of despondency, the demon king resisted to the bitter end. The superhuman army and the demon king fought for three days and three nights without rest. At the end of the third night, all that was left of the demon king was the head above his neck, and all that was left of the superhuman army was one human. It was Lee Sungjin, the man who never gave up. He could barely move his fist anymore, but he managed to lift it up and aim it at the demon king’s head.

The head of the demon king looked fed up as he said, “You relentless pest. I thought you were the most trifling of them all. I never thought I’d die by your hand.”

So what? Sungjin scoffed and threw down his fist.

Slam! A crack ran through the one remaining burgundy horn on the demon king’s head.

“Huh?”

Slam!

With the next attack, the demon king’s nose collapsed, but it was still not enough to smash his head in for good. Sungjin panted as he clenched his trembling fist once more.

“Hey! Wait! Wait a minute!” the demon king piped up in horror as blood streamed out of his nostrils, but Sungjin silently threw down his fist again and again.

Slam!

“Ack! Hey, this is too…”

Bang!

“Wait a minute, you bastard!”

The punches stopped flying. Of course, it wasn’t that Sungjin was hearing the demon king out, but that he was simply gathering his breath and waiting for the strength in his fist to return. To his surprise, that gave the demon king’s nose enough time to slowly grow back. It was far slower than at the start of the fight, but for a demon king of such a world, it was just a matter of time before he regenerated his entire body from what remained of him. The demon king and Sungjin were thinking the same thing: This last battle was going to last far longer than they had expected.

“Stop with the useless punching. There’s no power in your fist at all! Hey, human. You can’t kill me like this anyway. Why don’t we take a break, gather ourselves up, then try again?”

It was bullsh*t. It was clear as day who would be at an advantage when they were both back to their full health.

When Sungjin raised his shaking arm again, the demon king continued desperately, “No, let’s just stop fighting! I’ll leave. I’ll leave both Earth and Gehena forever. I’ll never show my face again, huh?” Sungjin said nothing, and the demon king added, “I’ll have my life and you’ll have both Earth and the demonic world. Two worlds combined. Think of the possibilities! You’ll have power that would rival a demon king. If you kill me now, Gehena will die out without a leader. Earth, having lost its axis of support, will slowly get sucked into the gates as well. Both worlds will come to an end! What use is that to you?”

Sungjin finally answered, “This world isn’t what’s important to me. What’s important to me is simply that you face your demise.”

The end result would be the same, so he didn’t appreciate such a half-hearted placation.

The demon king grew pale as he watched Sungjin slowly clench his fist again. How many times would he have to be battered by that fist to face his doom?

“Hey, hey! Can’t you at least just wait for me to kill myself? I keep losing my strength because of the automatic regeneration. Give me a little bit of time and I can burn my own soul with the flames of Gehena. You don’t have to do anything. I’ll just cease to exist on my own! I’ll, uh, I’ll close the gates too. Even if the demonic world collapses, Earth won’t get drawn to its end.”

Now that was an enticing suggestion. Sungjin nodded. “Fine. I’ll think about it after I beat you to death.”

“How are you going to talk to me when I’m… I’m telling you, you can’t kill me that way anyhow! Dammit, you’re so stubborn!” the demon king yelled.

The ruthless zero-sum punching had gone on for who knows how long when Sungjin was taking a moment to collect his breath again. Suddenly, he heard sniffling.

“Y-you damn motherf*cker… I really didn’t want to resort to this, but…”

Flames suddenly flickered midair, then surrounded the demon king’s head. The demon king’s skin, which had been tirelessly regenerating, started melting away in the dark red flames.

“Is this…”

They were the flames of Gehena—the fierce hellfire from deep within the demonic world that was said to scorch things out of their very existence. It was true, then. It was capable not only of burning up the demon king’s ever-regenerating physical body but even his soul. In other words…

“You said you couldn’t kill yourself because you didn’t have the strength. So that was all a lie, wasn’t it?” Sungjin grinned and raised his fist again.

The demon king flinched, then doubled down as he yelled, “What! What do you want! I really was going to f*ck off to another dimension as if I were really dead. How is that any different?”

The demon king, who’d been tearing up just moments ago, was now being strangely belligerent. Even the dogged Lee Sungjin was at a loss for words.

“Whatever, it’s all over now,” the demon said and sobbed. “Fine, I’ll die just like you want me to. But I won’t die alone.”

The flames that were torching the demon king slowly grew and grew until they reached Sungjin. In a matter of moments, his body, too, was engulfed in the overwhelming heat and dark red flames.

“This is the world-ending fire fueled by my mighty self, the demon king! No matter what, I’ll wipe you from existence. I’ll incinerate you, body and soul!”

Even though his flesh was melting away and his bones were surfacing within the flames, the demon king was grinning. He had been indignant about the long, torturous beating.

“You, you damn…” Sungjin said.

The demon king guffawed. “How does it feel? How does it feel for your soul to burn away?” The demon king’s own soul was burning away too, but he was laughing like a madman. He almost sounded like he was sobbing.

Sungjin let the demon king’s laughter flow over his ears as he looked down at his own burning body. Indeed, though his body had become so hardened from decades of absorbing monsters’ vital forces that it would not be injured by most physical damage, it was now melting away. His body had been fortified over and over again and had grown dull to pain, but the feeling of his skin igniting and his muscles burning was a terribly painful one. Though he had courted death countless times so far, this time, Sungjin was truly certain that he was dying. Nevertheless, he was finally seeing the bitter end of his life’s goal: to destroy the source of the demonic world’s invasion of Earth.

The demon king’s delirious laughter was still ringing out. Then, the demon king abruptly stopped with a flinch. Sungjin was grinning, engulfed in flames. It was a chilling sight, even to a demon king.

“Okay then. So it’s over for me as well, huh?” Not much muscle was left on his bones, but Sungjin raised his flaming fist once again. “So let me just punch you one last time.”

“What? You crazy bastard! Even now?”

“Think of it as repayment for emotional damage.”

Thwack!

“Ahh!”

The piercing shriek soon died down. Sungjin watched as the demon king’s face fell apart completely and turned to ash. Only then did he close his eyes. As his consciousness flickered away, he might have heard something clatter inside his brain.

That was the last memory of the hunter Lee Sungjin.