The Heavenly Demon's Regret

When word arrived that the Heavenly Demon had returned, I would sooner have died on the spot — that much is true. Forty years ago, I walked a land soaked in blood, climbed mountains of corpses, and finally cut off that devil's head. And now he claimed to have been reborn.

Our clan — every clan, in fact — refused to believe it, and we dispatched messengers in haste. Every one of them died, and the single survivor staggered home to confirm it was all true. Perhaps that, too, was the Heavenly Demon's design: the moment the man opened his mouth to speak, he vomited blood and fell dead.

The heads of the great clans had no time even to gather; every fighter each clan could spare was thrown into the fray. From our own Tang Clan, my son and I led the very best of our poison masters and hidden-weapon experts to the front.

My wife tried to see me off without tears, her face set in resolve — but her trembling hands betrayed her, as trembling hands will.

She seemed to want to say something, anything. Neither of us managed a word. We both knew that the instant our lips parted, everything inside us would come crashing down.

And then my son came out of his room soon after. Ah… the boy. His eyes swollen red, he smiled and cuddled his infant son, cooing at the baby like nothing in the world was wrong.

My daughter-in-law fought her tears with everything she had, but at the sight of them she sank to the floor and wept, great drops falling one by one. Only the grandchild, too young to understand, laughed and gurgled until the great hall rang with it.

That was the last laughter our household ever heard.

And so we threw ourselves at the Heavenly Demon. The grinding battle raged for over a year. My son lost an eye… and I lost an arm and a leg, bleeding out faster than I could count.

I had known it would come to this from the start. I threw myself into the fight already resolved to be spent as a sacrifice — because every inch I pushed back against him gave the elite late-stage cultivators behind me a slightly better chance of reaching the Demon.

I will never forget the way my son wailed in that moment. He had lost his own eye, and there he was, sobbing over my broken limbs. I could only barely reach out and grasp his blood-slicked hand.

Why cry, boy? If it meant saving your one remaining eye, I would have told him to take my last leg as well.

I had already made my peace with dying. But my son — him, I wanted to see live. That innocent, smiling grandchild — how long would he wait for a father who never came home? And even that, I knew, would be beyond him if things went on this way.

I hauled my ruined body upright and stepped forward, one foot, then another. However faint, I wanted to add my strength and see it ended.

Far off at the summit, the Heavenly Demon stood, half-lost in the haze. The masters who hurled themselves at him were cut down and flung away without mercy — and still they came, endless and unbroken. Their spirit was something to behold.

But the one who was wavering, in the end… was the Heavenly Demon himself. A man who could sweep away everything with a flick of his hand — and yet, heh… he was weeping tears of blood. Dying as I was, having let go of everything at last, I finally saw it.

I knew, in my bones. This was not what he wanted. None of it.

"That was the moment my breath stopped — and the moment I came here."

"…I see."

The information about this work available to Sohee amounted to nothing more than the story synopsis and the client's Life Record. Anything beyond that, she had to hear directly like this.

The webnovel I Became the Immortal Heavenly Demon told the story of a kind-hearted protagonist who, after suffering injustices and torment, made one wrong choice too many and became the Heavenly Demon; slain for it, he reincarnated again and again, struggling against a destiny that kept dragging him back to demonhood.

More than the brief synopsis, the client's deepest emotions, circumstances, atmosphere, and goals were the details Sohee found most useful.

"Was that too heavy a tale?"

"Not at all. Thank you for telling me."

She shook her head faintly. Dang Jaeik settled into his chair and let out a long, long sigh, then cast his gaze into the empty air.

"The Heavenly Demon… surely never wished to become such a thing. And yet the reincarnations kept happening, and destiny kept leading him back to it."

"…"

A client of the RPR Motel could never know what came after his death. And since the information passed to Sohee ended precisely there, she had nothing more she could offer.

"And my son… he would have died. My clan would have been exterminated root and branch."

Dang Jaeik drew a slow, deep breath.

"I wish to return for one reason alone — to protect those I love. If I raise and nurture him from his earliest days, before he ever becomes the Demon… who can say. Perhaps, at the very least, I could shield him. Perhaps my clan as well."

"…I understand what you're asking."

Sohee nodded, but Dang Jaeik only let out a dry little laugh.

"A selfish decision, is it not?"

"No. You have one single chance to go back. It would be a waste to squander it on nothing."

She meant every word. A chance like this never came twice. Thinking as reasonably — and as selfishly — as possible was precisely what raised the satisfaction rate of an RPR.

"I'll have the preparations ready within a week. Not a day more."

"See to it as you like."

Dang Jaeik picked up the water dropper beside him and tipped it over the inkstone with a soft plop. Then he took up the ink stick and ground it in slow, steady circles, scratch, scratch. The clear water drank in the ink and darkened, deeper and deeper.

Sohee rose quietly from her seat to leave him to his own thoughts, bowed her head, and stepped out of the room.

She headed for the front desk.

"This is just too much. Really."

Sohee slammed the booklet shut — Standards for RPR: Supporting Characters and Extras — and slumped back. The conditions were walled in on every side, front and back, and she could barely breathe for it.

Still seated, she let her forehead drop against the table with a dull thunk.

"'No RPR for personal reasons.' Meanwhile the protagonists get it whenever they please…"

"The protagonists' RPR is intended by the Author from the very begin.ning."

"If those were the only conditions, fine, I wouldn't complain. But it's 'this won't do, that won't do' — it's basically telling us not to even try."

"That, too, is a safeguard against chaos within the sto.ry."

Sohee pressed her cheek against the desk and muttered into the wood.

"No wonder the motel rulebook is as thick as an encyclopedia. This is banned, that's banned, everything is banned…"

In a haze of futility, she flipped through the book face-down, letting the pages riffle past. And among the dense, crushed-print thickets of taboos, one word suddenly flashed before her eyes: PERMITTED.

Sohee blinked twice.

"…'An opportunity may be granted to rewrite the original story into something entirely new'…?"

Even as she read the passage she'd found, she couldn't believe it. For supporting characters — whose every line was forbidden, restricted, minimized — there existed a move like this?

As Sohee scrambled up and pounced on the fine print, the Moon Jar clicked his tongue.

"Tsk. Don't go pinning hope on something that will never come to. pass. It doesn't fit Dang Jaeik's case at all, and besides — no supporting character in their right mind would ever do it."

Already slumped over the endless fine print, Sohee deflated like a punctured balloon, shoulders sagging.

"I thought as much."

"It means the opportunity is merely offered, nothing more. I have seen supporting characters succeed at RPR many times. But I could count on one hand the times I've seen that succeed. It. does. not. happen."

"Haah…"

Sohee snapped the book shut.

"Then why not just block off opportunities like this entirely? Why offer them at all? Why build the motel in the first place?"

"Because if only protagonists were given a chance, there would be outcry about unfa.irness."

Sohee's dead fish-eyes suddenly lit with fire.

"What is that supposed to mean? So… the conditions are suffocating, but technically, you've all been given a chance at RPR too?"

"In essence."

"Wow. That is genuinely messed up? Even without conditions like these, whether a supporting character's RPR succeeds depends entirely on the motel manager's competence. My grandfather supposedly lived here for two hundred years, and he couldn't even fill that gourd."

The more she thought about it, the more aggrieved she felt, huffing out breaths in gusts.

"So. You're complain.ing?"

"Of course I am!"

"Then what do you intend to do a.bout it?"

"…I'm sorry, what?"

The words caught in her throat, and Sohee stared blankly, mouth hanging open. The Moon Jar's mechanical voice flowed on, level as ever.

"If you cannot change the situation, you follow it. If you hate it, skip the RPR and dissolve into Oblivion. Simple."

"No, the situation you're handed is just too—"

"If you hate that, then become a prota.gonist."

And then the complaint would evaporate on its own.

Sohee had no reply. Her lips just opened and closed, opening and closing.

In the end, the Moon Jar was right. She could pour out complaints all day, but she couldn't change a thing — not unless she climbed high enough to remake everything herself.

Without power, you obey.

Her head, seething and boiling with grievance, felt as though cold water had been poured over it.

She had always known that every opportunity, every condition, tilted to one side. And she had known, too, that this tilt was the balance of this world.

A flush of shame crept up her face at the thought of how she'd been swallowed by her emotions, just for a moment.

"I'm sorry for the pointless rant."

"Then what should you be doing. right. now?"

"…Focusing on the regression preparations."

Sohee straightened up in her chair and gazed through the glass doors at the hotel in the distance.

The aloof-faced protagonists filed in one after another, and if nothing went wrong, they would proceed smoothly to the RPR Door. Not a single failure among them.

Her perfect goad. Her perfect brand of jealousy.

A short while later, a man in an immaculate suit appeared at the hotel entrance. Chunrok — General Manager of the hotel.