In an unfortunate turn of events, I appeared to have been reincarnated into the world of Seeker of the Netherworld.
Just a while ago, I’d witnessed firsthand the kind of grotesque, over-the-top violence this world had to offer. Celestia had shredded Joanne into a fine mist of flesh and bone, only for her to reform from scattered chunks in a matter of seconds, cackling as she stitched herself back together.
It was one thing to read about this sort of madness in a game, but seeing it unfold in real life was a whole different kind of nightmare.
These people are nuts.
I hadn’t fully grasped it before, but now, it was painfully clear—this world wasn’t one where a regular person like me could hope to survive. In the original game, the named characters often talked about how getting your body blown apart still hurt, no matter how strong you were. Even a small cut from a kitchen knife would send a shock through your nerves. I could only imagine what it must be like to have your entire torso obliterated and then stitched back together by sheer force of will.
Yet these lunatics took it in stride, throwing themselves into the fray again and again, as if the very concept of death had become a mere inconvenience.
Right now, I was on my knees in the vast, shadowed hall of an old castle, one of the Aros Temple Cult’s mountain strongholds. My body still ached from the earlier fight, my ribs throbbed with each shallow breath, and the iron taste of dried blood clung to my lips.
I was the lone survivor of the ten-man squad that had pursued Celestia, now waiting to face the consequences of my survival alongside three of the sect’s executives.
Why am I even here?
I glanced up briefly. Joanne, still wrapped in the black cloak I had given her, was lounging casually on one of the ornate stone chairs arranged in a rough circle at the center of the hall. She met my gaze for a split second, a thin smile creeping onto her lips, and I quickly looked away, my heart thudding painfully in my chest.
Did she call me here to take the blame for the nine dead grunts? I wondered, my mind racing. Is that it? If that was the case, I was screwed. She had the rank, the authority, and the sheer presence to pin the whole disaster on me without a second thought. I’d be dead before I could even protest.
I shifted my focus to the two other executives present, hoping for a distraction from my spiraling thoughts. Seated to Joanne’s left was someone I vaguely recognized as Rank 7, Fuankilo. Beside whom was another shadowy figure I pegged as Rank 5, Pawk.
Neither had made much of an impression in the game’s main story, often overshadowed by their more prominent peers. In some routes, their names didn’t even come up, and Fuankilo in particular had always struck me as a background character at best, despite her high ranking.
Not that their ranks mean much, I reminded myself. In the Aros Temple Cult, the numerical rank was more a reflection of overall contributions to the cause than pure combat power. Given the right circumstances, even someone like Fuankilo could, in theory, take down the cult leader. Not that I’d ever bet on it.
As I weighed my odds of escaping this situation alive, the air in the hall suddenly shifted. Shadows twisted across the cold stone floor, pooling together at the center of the chamber. The resulting deep, inky darkness swirled into a vortex. My heart stopped as a figure began to rise from the abyss, his form coalescing from the very darkness itself.
A man stepped forth, his body solidifying as if emerging from a thick, tarlike fluid. The shadows clung to him for a moment longer before dripping away and evaporating into the stale air. He stood tall, his form draped in a dark, flowing cloak. A simple iron mask etched with a single, stark X covered his face.
He literally just rose up from the ground!
The figure strode to the head of the circle, the sound of his boots echoing in the vast stone chamber. He settled into the largest chair, his movements slow and deliberate, radiating a quiet, suffocating pressure that seemed to seep into my bones.
The cult leader, Aros Hawkeye.
I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. This was the highest-ranking figure in the Aros Temple Cult, the man known among players as the “Ultimate Villain,” a twisted visionary who had driven his followers to countless atrocities in pursuit of his apocalyptic goals.
“Now then,” he said, his tone polite but carrying a weight that chilled my blood. “Let’s hear the report.”
So, this is Aros… The one guy I absolutely didn’t want to meet in person.
It had been a while since I’d found myself in this insane world, and this was my first time seeing Aros, the leader of the Aros Temple Cult, in the flesh.
Even the protagonist of the original game had been thrown off when they first met him. The guy had a way of talking that made you drop your guard, like a kindly old father figure. But beneath that gentle demeanor lurked a master manipulator, the kind of cult leader who could convince a person to abandon their very humanity without a second thought.
If you raise his affection too high in the original game, the protagonist gets brainwashed, goes full dark side, and wipes out the entire Kenneth Orthodoxy. Yeah, not touching that with a ten-foot pole.
In other words, whether I pissed him off or got too chummy, the outcome was the same—I’d end up dead. He was basically another Joanne, just with a bit more polish and a far scarier endgame. No matter how I approached this, I was walking on a razor’s edge.
Aros leaned back in his stone throne, the iron mask covering his face casting sharp, angular shadows across the room. The other three executives sat silently, their collective gaze fixed on me like wolves assessing a cornered prey. I could feel cold sweat trickling down my spine, my knees threatening to buckle as the weight of their attention bore down on me.
I took a shaky breath, my mouth suddenly dry as I forced my trembling lips to form words.