Chapter 1

Chapter 01: The Ego Sword Picked Me Up (1)

Master of the Holy Sword

“This child will do.”

The first person to choose me was the secretary of the chairman of Sunhang Group.

Four children who had received exceptional physical and intelligence scores at the orphanage were selected, and afterward, children gathered from across the country were given pills called “supplements.”

“Any action outside the schedule will not be tolerated. Anyone who does not take the supplements three times a day is out.”

The orphans became machines to survive. I was one of them.

We took the pills every day. When we took them, our minds grew clear and our emotional fluctuations disappeared. Some could not keep up with the schedule and fainted or got nosebleeds. Others had their schedules reduced and still could not stop the nosebleeds, so they were taken away in ambulances.

Fortunately, I had no side effects.

The children taken away in ambulances never came back. We heard they had been adopted into good homes, but I did not believe those words at face value.

Only later did I learn that Sunhang Pharmaceuticals had used us as test subjects and fed us drugs.

That was not necessarily all bad. At least, I grew healthier by the day. No, I grew stronger to the point that I wondered if this was even all right. Even a little exercise built muscle, I reacted sensitively to the smallest sounds, and my five senses, including taste and smell, were amplified.

I met the chairman’s grandson, Kim Jae-guk, around the age of ten.

“You, want to play with me?”

I instinctively realized Jae-guk was my lifeline. I followed him around and obeyed his orders.

After a few years passed like that, Secretary Kwak called me in separately.

“If you want to stay by Young Master’s side, you must pass the school equivalency exam with perfect marks.”

When an order came down, I carried it out by any means necessary. Thanks to that, I received the chairman’s grandson’s favor.

Before I knew it, I had been designated for the role of assisting the grandson of Sunhang Group’s chairman.

“Here, take this.”

Jae-guk often tossed me expensive gifts and disappeared. The first gifts I received from him were a high-end tablet and a smartwatch.

That was when I was fourteen, after I returned from placing second in shooting, third in judo, and fourth in kendo at the National Junior Sports Festival.

“That is enough competitions.”

I could not dream. I could not choose my future.

The reason I could not become an athlete was the “new drug” I had taken since I was young. As long as that drug remained inside me, I could not participate in any official competition.

Still, I did not mind. The chairman’s secretary had designed my future and presented it to me.

“Enter Hanguk University’s Department of Computer Engineering. You must graduate within three years. After that, I will send you abroad to study.”

My future was decided. That was closer to a blessing than coercion. I knew better than anyone what life was like for someone from an orphanage who received no support.

When I finished studying abroad in England and returned at twenty, a new order came down.

“Enlist.”

Unlike the chairman’s grandson, who avoided enlistment through his U.S. citizenship, I enlisted and applied to the Special Forces. I completed combat training at the top of my class and was strongly encouraged to be appointed as a noncommissioned officer, but that was not something I could choose. My future had been designed by Secretary Kwak for Young Master Jae-guk.

After my discharge, I joined Sunhang Group’s Strategic Planning Team and familiarized myself with the company atmosphere.

Afterward, when the chairman’s health deteriorated, the grandson who had gone abroad to study hurriedly returned. That one year of company life until then had been the golden age of my life.

“Drink, bastard.”

In just a few years, Jae-guk’s attitude toward me had turned cold.

It was because he mistakenly believed the chairman favored me. The chairman had defended me for the sake of his grandson, Jae-guk. The more I grew, the more things there would be for me to help with at Jae-guk’s side.

But Jae-guk was jealous of me for that.

“My apologies.”

“You son of a bitch. If your master tells you to bark, you bark, and if he tells you to drink, you drink. Apologies?”

I was driving. The number on the speedometer hovered around 200.

Jae-guk shoved a whiskey bottle into my mouth, and I held it there while letting it dribble out little by little.

When the chairman collapsed and could no longer get up, Jae-guk, who had been designated as vice chairman, became a colt with the reins cut loose. There was no one left to restrain him now.

“Pull over.”

I pulled the car onto the shoulder.

“Get out.”

“No, sir.”

“It’s an order. Weren’t you taught to obey orders?”

Until then, any order given to me had permitted any method as long as the result was good.

But Jae-guk’s life was on the line. If he got even a scratch on his body, all hell would break loose. No, it was obvious my life would vanish along with it.

Jae-guk rummaged through the glove box in front of the passenger seat, found a screwdriver, and stabbed it into my thigh. It hurt, but it was bearable. I thought he would stop after going that far and let it pass, but Jae-guk seemed intent on seeing it through to the end.

“You’re fired. Get lost.”

In the end, Jae-guk dragged me out of the driver’s seat. Dead drunk, he took the wheel.

I moved to the passenger seat. I was not naive enough to take something Jae-guk said in a drunken fit at face value. Even in that situation, whether he had said it because he was drunk or because he meant it could be checked later. Even if he truly intended to fire me, I had to protect Jae-guk. I had lived for that purpose.

“Won’t you let go of this? You dumb bastard!”

I took Jae-guk’s violence with my face while gripping the steering wheel with him. Even then, his eyes shone as he enjoyed the speed. Surging adrenaline and dopamine blew away his reason.

SCREEEEEECH!

The car skidded on the highway and slammed into the guardrail. At that moment, I turned the wheel. I controlled the swaying car so that the impact would not reach the driver’s seat.

But the sports car lifted into the air and dropped back down. It landed in the opposite lane.

When I came to again, I was in a private room at Sunhang Hospital. I had several fractures, but my life was not in danger. The vice chairman’s face had been badly torn open, and he was in surgery.

“Why did you do it?”

Desolation clung to Secretary Kwak’s voice. When he taught us, only frost-sharp words had poured from him, but perhaps he had aged, because he showed a trace of affection.

“My apologies.”

“People died. Seven years if it is short, twelve if it is long.”

He was telling me to go to prison.

“Yes, sir.”

“This was something you did alone. It has nothing to do with the vice chairman.”

“Of course.”

“What a shame. You were a good tool. The only one with no side effects, too.”

I had been raised as a good tool, and I had lived while achieving accomplishments counted among the very best. I had also been a great help to Sunhang Pharmaceuticals’ new drug development.

It had been a dreamlike stretch of time. It was servile, but I had received an education lacking nothing even compared to the chaebol heirs.

‘Seven years from now, I’ll be thirty-three? If it’s twelve years, thirty-eight.’

It felt endlessly far away, but I decided to endure it. Wriggling just because someone stepped on me was not like me.

I thought that was where the conclusion would land, but the situation began to take a strange turn.

―Late-night drunk speeding accident, 3 dead

―Speed 200 km. Sunhang Vice Chairman’s vehicle in fatal drunk-driving accident

The vice chairman’s presence in the car was supposed to be a secret, yet the information leaked to the press.

―Vice Chairman’s fellow passenger confirmed as Strategic Planning Office employee, controversy over shifting driving responsibility

Every media outlet was digging into it.

I did not care if I went to prison, but it would be troublesome if the truth came out.

―What a dogshit life!

It was a strange voice.

‘Withdrawal symptoms?’

Since I was admitted to the hospital room, I had stopped taking the medicine I had taken every day since childhood. That medicine had blocked my emotions and heightened my focus, but as its effects disappeared, an unfamiliar voice rang inside my head.

VMMMMMMMM!

The vibration was not in my head, but in the air. If my sensory organs had not broken, then either an earthquake was happening or an impact on par with one was being applied somewhere nearby.

―This resonance! The manifestation of ability! This is proof that you have no choice but to become my master!

At that moment, 2 objects appeared before my eyes.

A book and a sword.

The sword radiating golden light seized my gaze. It had no particular ornamentation, just a long hilt and a long blade. More shocking than that was the sight of the naked man standing beside it.

If an artist’s statue came to life and moved, perhaps it would look like that. He circled the sword, going round and round, and shouted as if delivering a speech.

―Your talent for drawing out my abilities has been proven the greatest across both worlds. The Necronomicon testified to it, and I felt it! Yet no matter how great your talent is, with that mindset, you cannot reach great achievements!

I did not even feel the need to argue.

I was the finest product made for an heir.

―I am Flambeju, the sacred object of the beginning and the first sword! I crossed dimensions in search of a master worthy of my greatness. Will you leave with me for the world I came from? If you change that way of thinking, I will choose you, unqualified though you are, as my master!

It was a strange thing to say. A master was not someone you chose. A master was someone who chose you.

Beside the sword was a book exuding a gloomy aura. It faded from sight as if melting into the darkness, but if I focused, I could make out its shape. It was a large book covered in sticky leather, and it seemed to have been made a very long time ago.

Then I sensed a presence. Someone had entered the hospital room, and a familiar smell seeped in with them.

It was a nurse.

But the nurse’s hand was trembling faintly. Her face reflected in the mirror was flushed.

When I, who had been pretending to sleep, turned around, the nurse flinched in surprise. I seized her wrist and checked the tray in her hand. There was a syringe and a vial on it.

With the vial’s label removed, there was no way to check its contents.

“……What is this about?”

“A supplement. I came to give you a supplement shot.”

It was a very practiced lie. The proof was her racing heartbeat, which belied her shameless expression.

Having lived while suppressing my emotions, I had come to closely watch changes in other people’s emotions. I had mastered it by observing what I lacked.

‘The vice chairman has abandoned me.’

The chairman who sponsored me had been an excellent leader. But the chairman’s grandson, whom I was supposed to serve, was a wastrel who did not measure up to even half his grandfather.

There must have been simple methods, like confining me or sending me overseas, yet he specifically wanted me disposed of. It was because he could not control his ridiculous jealousy.

I had lived my entire life for the chairman’s grandson. I had thought I might finally reveal my abilities now, but the vice chairman ruined everything.

‘Is this how it ends? My life.’

I had lived thinking only of how to live for my master, and when I faced a situation where that was utterly impossible, there was not a single thing I could do according to my own will.

Even though I had finished all kinds of studies in a short time, I could not make that simple decision.

―Live your own life, human.

His tone was blunt, but the blond man looked at me with an envious expression.

I did not answer.

I had only just been abandoned by my master, but I needed confirmation.

My loyalty was not so shoddy that I could shake it off in an instant.

I covered the nurse’s mouth and nose, then stabbed the syringe into the vial.

“May I inject this into you, Nurse?”

The nurse’s body thrashed. She tried to shake her head from side to side. When I pressed against her neck, before long she went limp. She had fainted.