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

It was definitely a long-awaited holiday.

I clearly remember sitting in front of the computer, but when I opened my eyes, I saw villagers performing superhuman feats before me.

When such an unrealistic scene unfolds before your eyes, the brain tends to accept it as is rather than trying to interpret it.

How do I know this?

Because that’s what I’m doing right now.

They clearly looked like humans just like me, but they were soaring through the sky.

No, not flying, but jumping around.

Hmm, this must be a dream.

I simply accepted the scene before me as it was.

Of course, even in a dream, I still feared being crushed to death, so I moved my body out of the way.

Being in a child’s body gave me some advantage when it came to hiding.

Huh?

A child’s body?

I urgently looked down and felt all over my body.

And belatedly realized.

That my body had completely changed.

‘Why am I so short? Have I become an elementary school student? But what are these muscles on an elementary schooler’s body… And why is my skin so pale?’

Without a mirror, I couldn’t confirm my exact appearance, but I could tell that this wasn’t my original body.

‘So it is a dream after all.’

Once I was certain, I felt more at ease.

‘Maybe I’ll look around.’

Despite the fear that welled up seeing people creating craters right before my eyes, when I calmed down, I found it fascinating to have such a vivid dream.

It seemed wasteful to just hide until I woke up.

So I stuck my body out from the alley.

And at that moment.

“Huh? It’s the mutant.”

A boy with a similar height to mine and a youthful face was pointing at me.

His words drew the attention of everyone around.

They say that when dream characters stare at you after you realize you’re dreaming, it’s quite eerie.

‘It really is fucking scary.’

The boy grabbed debris from the shattered stone ground and threw it at me without hesitation.

‘If I get hit, I’ll die.’

The moment that thought crossed my mind.

Thud-

The stone flew and lodged in my abdomen.

I couldn’t even see it.

He threw it, and I got hit. The middle process was omitted.

“Kuhk.”

My breath was cut short.

Pain flooded in, but contrary to my worry that my abdomen would burst open and kill me, it just really hurt.

The stone shattered into pieces upon hitting my body.

“Hey, why are you throwing stones? Want a massage?”

“I don’t know, it was the only thing I could grab.”

That was when I realized this wasn’t a dream, and my body wasn’t normal either.

♦♦♦

I was called a mutant in this village.

My name was Bell.

I had no parents, no home.

No friends, of course.

These people were descendants of the giant race, once considered demigods – I learned this by watching them pray every morning before a huge stone statue shaped like a giant.

Of course, since it’s close to a religious belief, I don’t know if it’s true.

But it was enough reason for me to fully accept that this was a world inhabited by monsters wearing human shells.

It seemed like a game world where brains were nerfed while bodies were excessively buffed. Not that I’d ever played such a game.

Well, perhaps nature here had weeded out all the intelligent ones.

Then again, nature probably didn’t anticipate that their steps would sink the ground or that a single punch would make massive trees disappear without a trace.

I accepted it that way.

There was no other option.

…If these monsters were let loose in the world, nature wouldn’t survive.

Hmm, I don’t know.

There must have been some mistake.

Seeing that the world hasn’t ended despite them roaming freely, there must be some principle in this world that I dare not comprehend.

I just accepted it, as trying to understand might break my brain too.

In that sense, I was indeed a mutant.

Of course, the “me” here was definitely born to an ordinary couple.

That’s what a talkative old man in the village told me as he saw me wandering the streets.

However, my parents died shortly after I was born, and since then, I began to be called a cursed child, he said.

My mother had always been particularly weak and died during childbirth, and my father followed her in death, he told me.

With my strength being unusually weak compared to peers, at some point, I was called a mutant.

Naturally, no one welcomed me.

But I couldn’t leave this village either.

Or more precisely, they didn’t drive me out.

This was because the “Forbidden Zone” was right outside the village.

I learned that this village where I had opened my eyes was extremely underdeveloped compared to other villages.

An abandoned village where the poor were pushed to live.

Well, that makes sense, considering the ground collapses every time someone jumps.

The villagers, unable to abandon me to the Forbidden Zone, neither completely rejected me nor accepted me, but simply treated me like a foreigner and neglected me.

That stirred emotions buried deep within me.

Memories of my past life: losing parents at a young age, being ignored for being poor, growing up lonely.

The agony that made me cling desperately to studying.

I thought I had overcome everything by entering a prestigious university, building some friendships, getting a job, and living ordinary days, but the loneliness engraved in my bones seemed not to have been overcome.

No, not bones. Since my body had changed, it was loneliness engraved in my soul.

The cold gazes around me added fuel to the unknown ember within me that had dimmed.

I gritted my teeth once more.

To rise to a respected position in this society that didn’t welcome me.

From then on, I rigorously built my body.

If I had devoted myself to studying in my past life, here I decided to build strength.

Strangely, hunger wasn’t that intense.

I was fine even after starving for three days. Of course, once I ate, it was endless, but it wasn’t a big problem as long as I filled up adequately.

I ate whatever I picked up from the streets or the surrounding mountains.

Initially I worried about it being dirty, but once I ate, my digestion worked incredibly well.

My body had good fuel efficiency.

I exercised every day to build my body and practiced fighting by throwing punches into the air for the first time in my life.

The disdainful gazes around me were familiar.

I knew best how those gazes would change later.

After a year of regular exercise and repeating seemingly meaningless punches, I thought:

‘I need real practice.’

There was a limit to how much simulation I could run in my head.

What mattered was real practice. Growth ultimately came from actual experience.

After a year, I confronted a peer who had always ignored me.

It was a boy named Ger, who had thrown a stone at me on my first day here.

I was beaten to a pulp.

As expected, imagination was just imagination.

No matter how much I prepared mentally, it was difficult to overcome my unusually weak strength. Moreover, he already seemed familiar with fighting.

The most traditional game here was fighting with bare bodies, so it was natural.

The only advantage I could find was that his movements were simple, as if he wasn’t thinking, and I could still use my head. Of course, even that intellect was overwhelmingly defeated by instinctual physical talent.

I was beaten to a pulp, but I didn’t die.

After losing to Ger, I spent a week just reviewing the fight with him.

And I challenged him again.

I lost again.

But I realized that Ger was weak to sudden, unexpected situations and habitually threw his right fist when flustered.

Another week passed.

This time, I anticipated his right fist and landed a couple of counters.

I still lost.

His body wouldn’t go down with just two counters.

Meanwhile, I would feel dizzy after just two direct hits.

‘I need to build more strength.’

I holed up in the mountains for three months.

I reviewed the battles with Ger in my mind while focusing on exercise to build my body.

And I appeared before Ger again.

“It’s tiring to play with a beggar.”

“Scared?”

“This fucking bastard.”

Asking if someone was scared here was a provocation worse than trash talk.

With that one phrase, you could pick a fight even with an old man who always walked with his hands behind his back and a gentle expression.

Indeed, nothing helped improvement more than creating a correction note based on real practice.

I fought almost evenly with him.

Keeping distance and trying to introduce variables, and then targeting his right fist every time it came – it was manageable.

But in the end, I couldn’t withstand his fierce rush in the final moment and lost.

By this point, one might fear losing for real, but Ger seemed to have found it enjoyable instead.

“Come back in a week. I’m getting interested too. I’m curious what expression you’ll make when you’re under my feet after trying so hard.”

After that, Ger seemed to be training hard too.

When I arrived a week later, he had corrected his habit of meaninglessly throwing his right fist.

So it became more challenging to deal with him.

But I had already determined that targeting that habit alone wouldn’t lead to victory. After all, even if I drained his stamina that way, I would still lose if I couldn’t stop his excited rush at the end.

Now, a head-on battle was the only answer.

I was utterly defeated.

“How does it feel?”

Is the difference in talent truly insurmountable?

“I’ll remember those words.”

No, it wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t.

“I’ll ask you the same question later.”

After that, I consistently challenged him every week.

Defeat. Defeat. Defeat. Defeat. Defeat.

Five defeats.

If I gave up in the pit of defeat, there would be no other path but to become a true loser.

So I didn’t give up.

A year passed like that.

“Huff… hah, the mutant bastard has grown a lot, huh?”

In front of me was Ger, kneeling with his hands on his knees, breathing heavily.

His body had grown in a completely different dimension compared to a year ago.

The same was true for me.

I looked down at the panting Ger with my back straight.

“Do you want to continue?”

“It seems too early to say that?”

With those words, Ger suddenly rushed at me.

Right fist.

As he reached his physical limit, his old habit that he had corrected reappeared.

I tilted my head to avoid that fist and extended my own.

Bam-

My fist landed precisely on Ger’s face.

Ger’s body floated up, flew for a while, and collided with a wall.

The stone wall crumbled with a crash.

Though no one was inside, it was the house of a man known for his nasty temperament.

This was bad. If caught, I would surely be beaten until I passed out.

“Still, I have to do what needs to be done.”

I approached Ger.

And put my foot on his face.

“How does it feel?”

There was no answer in return.