Chapter 1 - Prologue

"The disappearance of Mr. Noh, CEO of Daedo Corporation, on X X, 20XX..."

As usual, Dong Bongsu was cleaning up after enjoying his hobby.

Before long, the rush of water, the whine of the vacuum cleaner, and the swish of the broom fell silent. Finally, he rolled up the special plastic sheeting he had spread across the entire floor to keep blood from seeping through and threw it into the trash.

THUP.

Next came the product of his hobby, sprawled there all alone. It was an enormous corpse, unlike any he had handled before. Even so, Dong Bongsu slung it over his back with ease and headed for the freezer.

CREEEAK.

The large hinged door opened with a grating noise.

He went to a corner of the freezer and neatly arranged the still-warm body. The fat man's seniors were already lined up inside, reclining against the walls.

Of course, this body was a warm new recruit for now, but it, too, would become a senior before long.

"While police continue to trace Mr. Noh's whereabouts, the company funds he embezzled..."

The news playing on his smartphone was about the fat man who had just joined the freezer family.

Why had Mr. Noh become a target?

There was nothing special about it. It was simply because the fat man was a 'carnivore.'

Most humans were herbivores.

Even when their territory was invaded, they laughed it off. Even when someone subjected them to violence, if the other person was stronger, they let it end there. Enduring was their way of life.

Carnivores, on the other hand, actively hunted, attacking their prey, killing it, and devouring it. If a rival challenged them, they tore into it and snuffed out its life. Just like lions and tigers at the top of the survival pyramid.

Dong Bongsu enjoyed attacking and killing those carnivores.

For an apex predator like him, it was his hobby and his sole reason for living.

"During the investigation, police discovered more than ten people bound in chains in the basement of Mr. Noh's home. All were female, and at the time of discovery, all were unable to speak, their tongues having been cut out... The National Forensic Service... determined that all of them were girls who had gone missing several years ago..."

RATTLE. CLANG.

Closing the freezer's iron door brought the cleanup to an end.

Still listening to the news on his smartphone, Dong Bongsu strolled out of the storage building.

"In other news, claims that a recently developed virtual reality game has led to an increase in murders are attracting attention in academic circles..."

As news broadcasts tended to do, no sooner had the report about Mr. Noh—the newly dead fat recruit—ended than another story began.

"..."

TAP.

Dong Bongsu stopped midway up the stairs.

The broadcast passed from the anchor to a reporter, then from the reporter to an expert being interviewed.

"MURIM ONLINE must either suspend service immediately or be patched to prevent this excessive degree of synchronization with reality. By indiscriminately showing vivid images of blood and flesh flying everywhere, of hands, feet, and heads being severed, it stimulates murderous impulses in young students and immature adults. There is a very strong possibility of a connection to actual murders..."

The news often told him about new prey.

But...

"MURIM ONLINE, huh."

This was the first time it had told him about a new hunting ground.

Dong Bongsu stood there for a long time, staring intently at his smartphone until the report ended.

Afterward, he returned to his room and ordered one item online.

"This should be fun."

A capsule made exclusively for MURIM ONLINE.

A new hunting ground.

Episode 1: Rebirth

Abandon all hope, you who pass through this gate.

● ● ●

Belteruk, a god of death, was bored. Not because he had nothing to do. He had more work than he could handle. Even now, a mountain of tasks awaited him; he was merely taking a brief break.

The primary duty of death gods was to collect the souls of people whose allotted lives had run out.

To find the dead, those about to die, or those who had to die, and sever the cords of their souls. That was the job.

He had no particular complaints about the work itself. It was simply boring to repeat the same tasks every day. Being gods did not make them so very different from humans. Gods, too, experienced most of the emotions humans felt. Depending on their respective duties, they simply lacked certain emotions or experienced particular sensations and feelings more intensely.

The sole creator or perfect god humans imagined?

No such thing existed. No, perhaps there was a world where one did. But at least as far as Belteruk knew, none existed in this universe.

As far as Belteruk knew, the differences between humans and gods amounted to lifespan and occupation. If he had to add anything, perhaps strength?

Even those differences were not absolute. Some humans occasionally trained to the point of encroaching on the realm of the gods. There were certainly individuals with tremendous lifespans and strength rivaling a god's. Their souls were difficult even for death gods to collect.

As a rule, such cases gave death gods headaches. In severe cases, the entire underworld went on alert.

'Me?'

Belteruk briefly shook his head at the thought.

As that gesture suggested, he was an exception. If it would rid him of this boredom, as enduring as perpetual snow, he would actually welcome a flood of such incidents.

But those incidents happened once every tens of thousands of years, if that.

'Nothing like that will happen today, either.'

As always, Belteruk took out his death register. The moment he faced that sea of writing, a yawn escaped him. It really was tiresome.

CREEEAK.

Still, he could not put off his duties as a death god. Nothing could be more absurd than being annihilated for neglecting his work.

Yawning widely, he rose from his chair and glanced at the top of the death register.

3789028376.

The first death number. His first customer of the day.

Since he had last collected a soul from Dimensional Realm 110, this one would definitely be in Dimensional Realm 111. Rotating through the dimensional realms in order was a longstanding rule among death gods. Their predecessors had taught them that lingering in a single dimensional realm could taint them with its energy.

Setting aside the dimensional realm number, he checked the number once more.

3789028376.

Belteruk put the death register into his divine storage space and took out a terminal reserved for death gods. Made of black crystal, the device was only palm-sized, but it was a powerful tool that connected all manner of dimensional realms.

BEEP-BEEP-BEEP.

With a few light movements of his fingers, the scenery around him changed in an instant. The gray mist and cold air of the underworld vanished, replaced by the warm, humid air characteristic of Dimensional Realm 111. He had teleported there from the underworld.

Belteruk operated the terminal again to search for soul number 3789028376.

XX Villa, XX-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea.

He flew straight toward the location the terminal had found. Winding between buildings packed with every kind of greedy emotion, he reached his destination. Humans could not see it, but to a death god's eyes, the energy of desire and obsession rose from each building like hazy smoke. It was particularly dense in this area called Gangnam.

His first customer of the day lived in a low-rise residential building with a tidy exterior.

"Yaaawn."

Belteruk gave his eye a prod with his death scythe as it threatened to close from sheer boredom. Letting the scythe's chill seep deep into his eye to drive away drowsiness was a habit peculiar to him.

Having shaken off his sleepiness, he entered the building.

The interior was just as clean as the exterior. Perhaps the owner of soul number 3789028376 lived alone in this fairly large building; he could sense no movement from any other souls.

He headed for the fifth and highest floor, where he sensed the soul's vibrations. Passing through the wall, he found someone he presumed to be the owner of soul number 3789028376 sitting in a strangely shaped chair.

'One of those again?'

Belteruk knew what that black chair, sealed on all sides, was. It was called a virtual reality gaming capsule.

He did not know how humans had acquired such an ability, but they had created a new dimensional realm called virtual reality. Of course, it was a lesser sort of dimensional realm, distinct from a real one, but it was astonishing all the same.

Virtual reality.

As its name suggested, it was a virtual world, so souls could not belong to it directly. Even so, souls belonging to true dimensional realms could come and go through those things called capsules. Although the humans themselves were unaware of it, the death gods knew full well that their souls were repeatedly entering and leaving.

For that reason, some senior death gods took this matter extremely seriously.

It might bear the label 'virtual' for now, but if it continued developing, could it evolve into an actual realm within a few dozen generations? Perhaps even one or two?

... Such absurd, excessive fretting.

Humans might be so unpredictable that they were impossible to control, but...

'That's taking it too far.'

With a snort, Belteruk dismissed the old senior death gods' groundless worries and passed through the capsule's wall. Inside lay an utterly ordinary man, with an ordinary face and an ordinary build, wearing a cap for connecting to the virtual reality server.

Belteruk gave the man a cursory once-over, then raised his scythe high without the slightest hesitation and severed the neck of soul number 3789028376's owner. No blood flowed, nor was the physical body's neck actually cut.

A death god's scythe did not cut matter; it severed only the cord of the soul. To outward appearances, nothing had happened, but the body belonging to soul number 3789028376 was already dead.