Over ti, Freedman’s na had never stayed the sa.
Oktar. Lebella. Taknus.
Each na borrowed, each identity stolen.
That was the nature of a parasite—a demon born to imitate, to steal what belonged to others and wear it as their own.
They were the lowest of the low. The race even other demons despised. Creatures who survived by crawling beneath others’ skins.
Freedman hated that.
He hated the way they whispered the word parasite like it was filth.
He hated that his very existence depended on theft.
And yet...
’But if I were to beco a king...’
The thought struck him like lightning—mad, impossible, but glorious.
’If I could rise above the crawling and the hiding... if I could beco the Faceless Imposter... then my na would no longer be borrowed.’
’It would be mine.’
The idea burned through him like a fever.
Velra no longer mattered. The noble vampire’s dying breath was irrelevant compared to this revelation.
For the first ti, Freedman wasn’t hungry for blood or power—he was hungry for existence.
To be seen.
To be real.
To no longer be a shadow living in soone else’s light.
A desperate thirst for being itself clawed at his insides.
"Kraaah—!"
The scream tore out of him like sothing ancient and feral, a sound that didn’t belong to any one creature.
And with it, the last fragnts of Freedman’s stolen reason shattered.
The faceless human shape began to twist and unravel. His body lted, skin sloughing off like wet parchnt until there was nothing left but shadow.
No eyes. No mouth. No form.
Only darkness.
From head to toe, his body was replaced by roiling, living shadow that pulsed with malice.
And then it grew.
The outline of a man dissolved into sothing monstrous—elongated, hunched, its limbs splitting like the tendrils of a nightmare. The ground quivered beneath its weight.
The air filled with the heavy, suffocating aura of hatred and hunger.
Freedman—if that na still ant anything—no longer looked human, nor parasite, nor demon.
He was sothing else entirely.
Sothing born of envy and denial.
Sothing made to kill.
And before him stood the Faceless Imposter—his supposed king, the one whose existence mocked everything he’d ever wanted.
The shadows around Freedman rippled, trembling with murderous intent.
This was no longer about orders or vengeance.
It was about erasing the one who stood as proof that he would never be real.
The monster lunged forward.
Solely, completely—
To assassinate the king before him.
----
"Completely thrilled."
Freedman’s voice ca out warped—gleeful, unhinged.
His body continued to expand, twisting grotesquely as shadows bulged and hardened into slick, black muscle.
The sound of bone—or sothing worse—cracked and reford under his shifting skin.
-Crack, crack, crack.
Saliva dripped in thick strands from the maw that had replaced his face, fangs lengthening until they glead like knives in the half-light.
A grotesque form, reminiscent of so nightmarish worm, raised itself from the snow. Its body pulsed and writhed with each breath, the ground beneath it trembling.
’Why is this guy here...?’
At first, I thought Freedman was just another parasite. They were dangerous, sure, but manageable.
But this thing... this thing was different.
The mont I saw its true form, I knew.
How could I not?
This was it—one of the major boss encounters.
The first monuntal eting with a high demon.
And that monster... was exactly it.
—"You are not the Third Prince! Reveal yourself, wicked demon!"
...Shoot.
Caught.
The scene was playing out exactly as I rembered it from the ga. The infiltrating demon’s disguise had been uncovered, his identity revealed by the protagonist’s sharp instincts.
And then ca the line that had made every player’s heart drop.
—"I haven’t fully absorbed his mories and emotions yet! Well, fine! Now that it’s co to this, I’ll just devour you! And all your dear friends too!"
The Third Prince’s face had gone dark, shrouded in black mist.
That was the cutscene.
The mont when the next boss—the Deceiving Ground Spider—finally appeared.
"Deceiving... Ground Spider," I muttered under my breath.
[Keke, I don’t get why people make such a big deal about Alice.]
I rembered the forum threads—the s, the frustrated posts, the despair.
[That thing wiped before I even understood the attack pattern.]
[He’s the weakest of the Four Heavenly Kings, they said. Weakest!]
[Learn from Mr. Bad’s strategy guide, trust .]
Alice had been the mid-boss—the one who crushed anyone still finding their footing in the ga.
But this thing?
This thing was the wall that separated casual players from survivors.
A nightmare that punished overconfidence.
[Newbies must read! Strategy for defeating the Deceiving Ground Spider!]
I could still rember writing that post myself—half out of frustration, half out of pride when I finally managed to beat it.
To think I’d end up standing here... face-to-face with that sa monster, in the flesh.
It didn’t feel like a cutscene anymore.
It felt real.
And this ti, there was no "retry" button waiting on the other side.
The monster’s shadow lood larger, blotting out what little light filtered through the storm. Its many tendrils slithered through the snow, twitching like veins beneath translucent skin. Each movent left faint trails of steam where the snow lted away, hissing softly.
Freedman—or what was left of him—no longer had a face. The featureless mass rippled, pulsing with stolen mories and emotions. Each breath exhaled a sound like grinding teeth.
"Foolish...," it hissed, its voice echoing as if a dozen throats were speaking at once. "You... should’ve stayed hidden."
Velra, still slumped against the tree, forced her eyes open. Her once-pristine dress was torn and stained with blood, but her gaze burned with clarity for the first ti since the fight began.
"So that’s... what you really are," she whispered. "A parasite who dreams of being a king..."
Freedman’s enormous, warped body twitched as if barely able to contain the chaos inside it.
"Dreams?" His voice gurgled, layered with static and sli. "No... I only consu."
Then ca the laughter—wet, guttural, distorted like the echo of sothing drowning. It rolled across the clearing and rattled in my bones.
The trees groaned as his shadow spread outward, swallowing the forest whole. Every flicker of darkness felt alive, reaching, devouring.
And then—
"Aaaargh!!!"
The roar tore through the air like a storm.
In an instant, what had been a lush forest turned to ruin. The ground split and heaved; ancient trees collapsed one after another, powerless beneath the crushing weight of his aura.
The shadow monster moved, and with every step, life died.
And unfortunately—its target was .
I could feel it. The weight of its killing intent pressing straight down on my chest.
’Of course... just my luck.’
My stats were still abysmal, barely recovered from the last fight.
From experience, I knew my thief build wasn’t suited for this kind of enemy. A build made for critical strikes and precision couldn’t stand up to a walking natural disaster.
’Even with all my artifacts, there’s no way I can trade blows with that thing head-on.’
Freedman’s warped voice cracked through the chaos.
"Hand it over! The throne! Freedom!"
The demand was half-scream, half-rant.
And it was obvious who he was shouting at.
.
I sighed inwardly.
’A throne? Freedom? He’s lost it.’
He must’ve absorbed fragnts of Velra’s mind along with her blood, tangled her dying delusions with his own madness.
His huge, shapeless body rippled, and he bared his teeth—jagged, glinting with shadows—toward .
"King—!"
I tilted my head slightly, letting a faint smirk tug at my lips.
"I’ll pass," I said evenly. "Sothing tells you couldn’t handle the weight of that crown."
The shadow monster froze for a heartbeat, then scread again, the sound shaking snow from the branches.
It was almost funny.
For all his power, Freedman’s rage made him predictable—wild, unthinking, easy to manipulate.
’Good. That’s what I needed.’
Because the more blinded by anger he beca, the easier it would be for to finish this.
And as his monstrous form lunged toward , tearing the earth apart in his wake—
I couldn’t help but smile.
’It turned out rather well. Now... let’s see just how far I can push him.’
I grinned when his hulking shape lunged—big, blind, all teeth and thunder. Exactly the kind of charge I wanted.
"Is that it?" I called, dancing just out of reach. My boots barely sank in the powder; every step was a promise to goad him further. "Is that how kings take crowns? By smashing everything around them until nothing’s left to rule?"
His roar answered . The trees shuddered. The ground heaved. He was all montum and shadow; if I let him keep that, he’d flatten the whole valley and probably with it.
So I did the only smart thing: I ran him into trouble.
I pivoted, feinting left, then right. Freedman followed—huge, clumsy, single-minded.
Each ti he overcommitted I gave him a little more of my flank and a little more of the forest’s geography. He was hungry for the throne, for the Faceless Imposter, for whatever stitched his madness together; baiting it out of him was as easy as waving a bone. He swallowed it.
"Say his na!" I taunted, keeping my voice light. "Call your king! Tell him you’re coming to steal a crown!"
That did more than rile him—it doubled him over. The thing wasn’t rely enraged; it was unraveling, the parasitic voices and Velra’s fractured mories tangling into a single, violent logic.
’Now it’s Alia turn. I hope she just follows the order perfectly as she does.’
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