The massive steel gates of the Sector 3 Fortress loomed over Harish like the teeth of a mechanical giant. To the average refugee, these walls represented safety from the horrors of the Dead Zone; to Harish, they were a curious eyesore that obstructed his view of the neighborhood he once called home. As he approached the primary checkpoint, the atmospheric sensors began to wail. High-frequency scanners swept his body, searching for mana signatures, system-integrated crests, or rift-contaminated essence. A squad of guards, clad in thick exoskeletal armor and carrying pulse rifles, stepped forward.
"Identify yourself, Traveler," the lead guard barked, his voice distorted by a helmet speaker. "You're coming from a Gray Zone without a transport permit. Hands where we can see them." Harish raised his hands slowly, a tired but polite smile on his face. "I'm a resident. Well, I was. I've been away for a while. Name is Harish. My family should be in Sector 3." The guards exchanged looks. One of them checked a handheld terminal. "Harish? No last name? There's no player record for you. No guild affiliation. You're not even in the active citizen database."
"I told you, I've been away," Harish said, his tone casual. "Check the pre-Fracture archives. Or the missing persons list from five years ago. I just want to go home." The term "Returnee" whispered through the guards' comms. In the new world, Returnees were common—people who had been sucked into rifts and spat back out days or months later—but someone returning after five years from a Gray Zone without a single scratch was unheard of. Following Protocol 9, the guards didn't arrest him; instead, they escorted him to the Returnee Rehabilitation Center, a massive, sterile complex designed to monitor those who had "tripped" through the dimensions.
While Harish was being led to a white-walled room with a comfortable bed, the rest of the world was descending into a feeding frenzy. The footage leaked by "The Eye," the world's most secretive and powerful intelligence agency, had reached the dark web. In the subterranean headquarters of The Eye, a room bathed in the cold blue light of a thousand monitors, a woman sat in a high-backed chair. Her face was obscured by the darkness, save for a slight, enigmatic smile. She was known only as "The Pupil," the head of an organization that traded in the secrets of gods and mortals alike.
"They are all calling," a voice spoke from the shadows—a high-level data broker. "The Mount Hua Sect is offering three Spirit Vein stones for the raw metadata. The Tang Clan wants the chemical analysis of the dust he kicked up. Even the Blood Demon Cult has sent an envoy; they believe he is the reincarnation of their founding patriarch." The Pupil watched the video of the wooden branch cleaving the sky. "Let them bid. The Murim sects, the Magic Towers, the Knights of the Round Table... they all see a weapon. They see a tool to tip the balance of power against the Tower of Trials." She paused, her eyes narrowing as she watched Harish's relaxed posture after the fight. "But they are wrong. He isn't a weapon. He is the one who holds the armory. Tell the Shadow Gate they can have the location for ten million credits, but warn them: if they try to recruit him as a 'vice leader,' they might find their organization erased before the contract is signed."
Across the globe, the various factions began to move. In a hidden mountain valley, the Elder of the Mount Hua Sect slammed his fist onto a stone table. "If this man possesses the true Heavenly Demon Art, the balance between the Orthodox and Unorthodox is gone! We must find him and determine if he is a friend to the Heavens or a scourge!" In a gothic spire in Europe, the Archmage of the Red Tower stared at the mana-void left by Harish's strike. "He didn't cast a spell. He commanded the world to forget the existence of the dragon. This is not magic. This is Sovereignty. We must obtain his secret, or the Magic Towers will become obsolete."
Perhaps the most ambitious was the Shadow Gate—a collection of rogue players and dimensional outcasts who opposed the Human Alliance and the Tower of Trials. In their hidden lair, a dark-clothed man with a scarred face sharpened a dagger. "A man who defies the system without being a player?" the man laughed. "He is the perfect figurehead. Offer him the Vice-Leadership. Tell him we can give him the world. If he refuses... well, no one is truly invincible."
General Marcus Thorne had not been idle. While the official stance of the Human Alliance was "observation," he had dispatched his most trusted asset: his daughter, Colonel Aris Thorne. Aris sat in a high-tech surveillance van parked three blocks away from the Rehabilitation Center. She watched the thermal feeds and the mana-scanners, her heart pounding. She had the "Harish" file open on a side screen. "He's just... sleeping?" she whispered, looking at the feed from Harish's room. In the video, Harish was sprawled out on a plush bed, a bag of subsidized crackers in one hand and a remote control in the other. He looked like the furthest thing from a "Demon King." He looked like a man who had discovered the joys of cable television after a long fast.
'My father thinks he's a Level-S threat,' Aris thought, her mind racing. 'The Murim sects think he's a god. The Shadow Gate thinks he's a revolutionary. But look at him. He's complaining to the nurse that the Wi-Fi signal is too weak in the east corner of the room.' She spoke into her comms. "General, subject is contained in the Sector 3 Rehab Center. He is showing zero signs of aggression. In fact, he seems to be enjoying the 'laziness' of the facility. He hasn't asked for a sword or a grimoire. He asked for... an extra pillow and a spicy ramen bowl."
"Do not be fooled, Aris," her father's voice crackled back. "A lion is still a lion when it's napping. The Eye has leaked the footage. Every shadow-dweller and sect leader is heading toward Sector 3. Your job is to ensure that no one touches him—not because we want to protect him, but because if they provoke him, that fortress will become a crater."
Inside the Rehabilitation Center, Harish was indeed in a state of bliss. To the Alliance, this was a high-security observation ward. To Harish, it was a five-star resort compared to the iron-blooded battlefields of the Abyss or the cold, silent peaks of the Murim world. 'Clean sheets,' Harish thought, rolling over and staring at the ceiling. 'No one is trying to assassinate me in my sleep. No disciples are asking for enlightenment at 3:00 AM. And this thing called "The Internet"... it's evolved so much. I can order food from a screen? Humans are geniuses.' He was fully aware of the scanners. He was aware of Aris's van outside. He was even aware of the three Shadow Gate assassins currently crawling through the ventilation shafts of the building. He could hear their rhythmic breathing and the faint clinking of their poisoned blades.
'They're so loud,' Harish sighed. 'Can't they see I'm trying to watch this documentary on ancient history? It's been five years, and people already think the pre-Fracture world was a myth.' One of the assassins, a man known as "The Silent Blade," peered through a vent grate into Harish's room. He saw a young man in a hospital gown, seemingly defenseless. 'This is the Demon King?' the assassin thought, a sneer forming behind his mask. 'The Eye must be losing its touch. This boy is a nobody. We'll bag him, take him to the Leader, and if he's useless, we'll harvest his organs for mana-research.'
As the assassin prepared to drop down, Harish didn't even look up from the TV. "If you drop any dust on my bed, I'm going to be very upset," Harish said, his voice flat. The assassin froze. His heart skipped a beat. He was an A-rank stealth specialist; his presence was supposed to be undetectable even by high-level sensory players. "Who are you talking to?" the assassin hissed, dropping into the room anyway, his blade leveled at Harish's throat.
Harish finally looked at him. The "lazy student" expression didn't change, but for a split second, the assassin felt as if the room had disappeared. He wasn't in a rehab center anymore; he was standing in front of a vast, infinite shadow that stretched across the stars. The gravity in the room tripled. "I'm talking to the three of you," Harish said, pointing to the vent and the door. "I'm staying here because the bed is soft and the ramen is free. If you ruin this for me, I'm going to send you back to your leader in pieces. Understand?" The assassin's knees buckled. It wasn't a skill. It wasn't mana. It was the sheer weight of a soul that had ruled a hundred dimensions. He felt like a mouse standing before a hurricane.
"W-we were sent to offer you a position..." the assassin stammered, the blade shaking in his hand. Harish laughed. "Position? I've been a king, a sovereign, and a god. You think I want to be a 'Vice-Leader' of a bunch of people who hide in sewers? Get out. And tell the 'Eye' or the 'Pupil' or whatever she calls herself that if she leaks my face again, I'll close her eyes forever." With a casual wave of his hand, a gust of wind blew the three assassins out of the room and back into the hallway, slamming the door shut with a finality that echoed like a thunderclap.
Aris Thorne stared at her monitors. The thermal signatures of the three intruders had just been launched down the hallway at sixty miles per hour. "What happened?" her father demanded. "We saw a sudden energy spike." "He... he just evicted them," Aris said, her voice filled with a mix of awe and terror. "He didn't even get out of bed. General, I don't think he's staying here because he's a 'Returnee' who needs help. He's staying here because he's lazy. He's using our most secure facility as a vacation home."
In the headquarters of The Eye, the Pupil suddenly stood up from her chair. A single drop of sweat rolled down her temple. On her primary screen, the feed of Harish's room had gone black, replaced by a single line of text: "STOP WATCHING. I'M BUSY." The Pupil began to laugh, a hysterical, sharp sound. "He knows. He knows everything. The Human Alliance is worried about a 'Demon King.' They have no idea. We aren't dealing with a player or a martial artist. We are dealing with the owner of the house, and he's just realized how messy we've made the place."
As night fell over Sector 3, the tension only grew. Representatives from the Galactic Sword Clan and the Six Sabers Martial School had already arrived at the gates, demanding entry. The Shadow Gate was licking its wounds and planning a larger, more desperate move. And in the center of it all, Harish finally turned off the TV, fluffed his extra pillow, and closed his eyes. 'Tomorrow,' Harish thought as he drifted off to sleep. 'Tomorrow I'll go find Mom. But for now... this silence is the best treasure I've found in three hundred years.' Unbeknownst to him, the "Demon King" title had already become the most searched term on the global mana-net. The world was waiting for his next move, while the man himself was just hoping they'd serve eggs for breakfast.