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Chapter 1

This saying is one that I came up with based on personal experience, and it goes something along the lines of “when confronted with a situation too bewildering, human thoughts turn simple.” It was the exact moment when this saying had crossed my mind that I found myself sitting in an unfamiliar office.

Facing me was someone I had never seen before—a grumpy woman wearing a business suit. She was demanding that I sign some documents whilst trying to explain it all to me using complicated jargon. Her complicated explanation turned out to be quite straightforward. In simple terms: there was a place called Hell, and I seemed to have died.

Apparently, Hell did exist, and I was now on its doorstep. As I read the document in front of me, I quickly learned that the cause of my death was “acute myocardial infarction due to hypertension, resulting in cardiac arrest.” And the reason for my hypertension was apparently “reading hate comments.”

What? Seriously? I died because my blood pressure shot up from reading online hate comments? I mean, I did remember my vision becoming slightly blurry from all the malicious criticisms I was reading, but was that enough to give me a heart attack?

“Hurry up and sign,” the woman said as she tossed the piece of paper in front of me. On the paper was some text, and an empty space for my signature.

“... So, you’re telling me I died from high blood pressure just because of some online hate comments? Do people really die from something like that?” I asked.

“Do you think there’s some glorious reason why people die? I’ve seen unlucky people slip on banana peels and pass away. Now, let’s stop wasting time. Read the contract and make your decision already.”

I really wished this was a dream, but here I was in Hell now. My punishment had been decided, and I was being told to sign a type of contract I had never even thought about in my life. Nonetheless, I carefully skimmed through the document like I would have done with any other contract, and a list of familiar words caught my attention.

City of the Dead

Surviving in a Post-Apocalyptic World

The Hunter Becomes a Manager

Redemption of a Degenerate

The Game Became Reality, and I’m the Janitor

The Demon King is Dead

Before I entered the afterlife, I’d worked as a novel writer, and these were all titles of the novels I’d written when I was alive. My sins as a novelist were listed as "Habitual Discontinuation of Novels" and "Ridiculous Plot Twists." The more surprising fact was that the punishment for it was to enter one of my own novels.

“So, you’re saying I have to enter one of the novels I’ve written?”

“Yes, and which novel and which character you become is random.”

\'Damn... I should have written more wholesome novels.\'

***

The woman, who was either a grim reaper or some other kind of employee of the underworld, gave me a more detailed explanation of the situation before I could ask more questions. According to her, everyone in the world commits sins, except for a very rare few, and nobody goes straight to Heaven. Instead, everyone goes through a process of atonement for the sins they’ve committed throughout their lives. and since the type of sin varies by person, the methods of atonement are also unique.

Me? I was just a mediocre novelist who managed to make a decent living off web novels. As it turned out, my biggest sin was leaving countless unfinished stories behind and abandoning readers who were genuinely enjoying the stories l discontinued. Now that I thought about it, I had frequently gotten bored with one novel and would start working on a new one whenever I felt like it.

“Strictly speaking, the sins you’ve committed are relatively minor. However, since you’ve committed the same sin against many people, all of it has accumulated into one giant sin,” the woman explained.

“Oh... I see,” I muttered.

Could sin be arithmetically calculated like that? What was this, some kind of mileage system? Listening to her made me feel ashamed of myself. I don’t know why, but listening to a Grim Reaper criticizing you felt much more embarrassing than listening to a normal human doing it.

I was so uneasy that I could feel my blood pressure rising. What would happen if I suffered another heart attack and died once more?

Anyway, after reading the contract in more detail, I found out that my punishment was to enter one of my novels as a random character and survive until the end of that novel. Only then would I be granted access to Heaven.

According to the grim reaper, many went straight to Hell without even getting the chance to atone for their sins, and so I was considered to be fortunate.

“Since it’s your own novel, you should know the whole story and exactly when and how things will happen, right? So this isn’t really a punishment, is it? It should be easy for you,” The grim reaper said in a low voice, without looking at me.

“No, um... Well, you see, it really depends on the novel....”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just that I... I’ve only been writing stories where characters die miserably....”

“Is that so? In that case, think of it as a punishment for your indifference when it comes to human lives, for killing them so miserably like that.”

What a jerk. It wasn’t as though I’d killed them in real life! It was all just fiction! If I’d known I was going to have to live in such a world, I would’ve happily written about rainbows and unicorns in my novels. I mean, if I had actually written something like that, I guess my punishment would have also been different, but regardless, what novel writer on Earth would even think about this kind of situation in the first place?

Also, how was I supposed to survive in my own novel when all my ideas were fictional and came from my imagination? Would I get the physical abilities and powers of the characters as described in the novel? No. Just because I described a character throwing punches as fast as lightning didn’t mean that I could.

Moreover, I was known for being a major drama queen for writing many horrible scenarios in which people were isolated and starved to death. Most of my stories had bad endings, so much so that my readers called me a ‘madman allergic to happy endings.’ It actually made more sense to say that my sin wasn’t leaving novels unfinished, but rather, ending all of them in a way that left readers feeling terrible.

So, what are these infamous novels I’ve written, you ask? Let me break them down one by one.

City of the Dead

A zombie apocalypse story.

I was positive that I would die on day one.

Surviving in a Post-Apocalyptic World

A post-apocalyptic story.

Surviving in a perfectly fine world was difficult enough, but now I had to survive in a post-apocalyptic world? No way.

The Hunter Becomes a Manager

A story about a hunter in the modern world.

I would be fine in this one if I ended up becoming the main character, but the chances of that happening among the hundreds of characters that showed up in the novel were too low. I’d probably just end up as the unfortunate pedestrian in the background, crushed by a monster.

Redemption of a Degenerate

A story about a miserable person going to an alternate dimension, an isekai, to redeem himself.

In this one, about half of the population died near the end. I\'m definitely going to be in that half. If I even made it that far, of course.

The Game Became Reality, and I’m the Janitor

A story where a game and reality merged into one and the main character took the role of a janitor. It was based on the classic plot where the janitor turned out to be the strongest character in their world. But all of that didn’t matter because only one-tenth of the population survived when the game and reality merged, so it was unlikely that I’d be a part of that group. I was more likely to die as soon as I entered the world.

The Demon King is Dead

This one had the lowest rating across all my novels, but in my opinion, it’s the best one. The backdrop of this story was a long war between humans and demons. The demons had their own kingdom, and the story takes place soon after the humans fight and kill the Demon King. The story focuses on the life of humans after their victory over the demons, hence the title, The Demon King Is Dead. A wholesome story, and one of the few novels where I intentionally did not introduce any global catastrophes throughout the plot. I wrote this novel to prove the critics who accused me of only writing tragic endings wrong. Although the story doesn’t actually end on a good note, it still starts out peacefully.

‘I need to get this one, please!’ I thought as I waited for the results.

And to my surprise, I got what I wished for.

Well, sort of.

Through the random draw, I became the Demon King’s son, from The Demon King Is Dead.

***

Being placed inside of The Demon King is Dead was in my favor, but spawning as the Demon King’s son wasn’t. I didn’t write this character at all, so I had no knowledge of what he was like. The grim reaper did say it would be random, but I didn’t think they’d throw me into a character that I didn’t even know existed. But from my knowledge of the novel, I could easily tell that it wasn’t good to be this character.

The humans had just killed the Demon King, and they were probably coming after his son next. Thus, he was bound to be in great danger and under threat. The ideal situation would have been to become the Demon King himself, because even though plot-wise he died soon after the story began, he was still stupidly strong, and I would’ve been able to fight my way to victory over the humans and try to break the plot.

It’s said that unlucky people would break their noses even from falling backward. I’m certain that this saying was meant for me, because not only did I die from hypertension after reading some comments, but right after being granted the most stable novel I had, I was immediately set up to die again!

It would have been nice if I was the Demon King, but instead, I became a seventeen-year-old Demon Prince.

[Name: Baalier Junior]

[Age: 17]

[Current Stats:

[Strength 3.4 (F)]

[Agility 4.3 (F+)]

[Dexterity 5.2 (D-)]

[Mana 9.9 (C-)]

[Stamina 5.7 (D-)]

[Race: Archdemon]

[Talents: None]

[Skills: Control Demon (D) (Unique ability of Archdemons)]

[Overall rating: Low-level Demon King]

[Combat Ability: F]

A hologram appeared in front of me, displaying an overview of who I was as well as my basic attributes and skills. Interestingly, I didn’t recall writing such a function in my novel. Was this a little feature the grim reaper added to help me out a bit?

So, you could say I found myself in quite a cliché situation—a novelist entering their own story, blended with a classic RPG game system. I’d read tons of novels from these genres, so I was familiar with the setting, but experiencing it in reality was an entirely different thing altogether.

My pathetic stats did not help either. The Demon King and his descendants, all of whom were of the Archdemon race, were supposed to be overpowered, but I guess there were exceptions. I lacked any combat ability, and the supposed power to dominate demons, Control Demon, seemed utterly useless, considering all the demons around me were already deceased. The situation couldn’t get any worse.

[Prologue Event: The Downfall Details: The Demon King’s forces have been defeated, and you are too weak to help. Survive the downfall. Objective: Escape the Demon King’s Castle. Reward: 100 Achievement Points]

I look around to see myself amid the destruction of the Demon King’s Castle. In this chaotic situation, the mysterious hologram in front of me was the least of my concerns. I could only think of one word: run. There was no point in trying to stop the war or complain about my situation.

Bam! Crash!

It seemed like a fierce battle was already underway inside the Demon King’s fortress. I could hear the thunderous clash of weapons and the shouts of warriors echoing through the air, making the ferocity of the battle feel all too real.

It wasn’t just the interior either; the cacophony of the siege seemed to envelop the entire area. Shouts, screams, and the cries of monstrous creatures filled the atmosphere. The corridors were heaped with dead demons, a sight I could hardly fathom.

I felt myself about to faint when, surprisingly, the thought of imminent death spurred me into action and the fear of death kept propelling me forward.

“I can’t believe this madness!”

Normally, being a Prince would be a good thing. But in this specific situation, it was quite frankly the worst role to be in.

“Please, let me switch to something like ‘Human Soldier 1’! I beg you, please!”