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chapter 1
Feels Like I’ve Seen This Before
KWAANG!
KWA-KWA-KWANG!!!
“Hahaha! How long are you going to keep running away like a little rat, huh? Huh? Little brother!!!”
The sword strike shattered and destroyed everything around it. Even though this was the middle of a fierce battlefield, no one dared approach the area where the sword’s energy radiated.
The one swinging the sword was none other than the greatest swordsman of the continent, standing at the pinnacle of power.
The Sword King, Kyle.
His hair was long, combed back, and atop his head sat a magnificent crown. His facial features, seemingly carved with meticulous care by a master sculptor, shone brilliantly even without adornments.
Beneath that, his black armor seemed to absorb light. Rumor had it it was crafted by dwarves, able to withstand most attacks without leaving a scratch.
Shu-rak.
The red cape draping his body and the sword resting on his shoulder made him look like a legendary hero from myth.
Kyle himself emitted light, like the very center of this world.
How many had been captivated by this Kyle, shining like a true protagonist?
KWA-AAANG-!!!
At that moment, Kyle’s sword collided with something. More precisely, it was because his opponent could no longer dodge his strike.
“Finally, I’ve reached you! Little brother!!!”
Kyle shouted with joy in his eyes. The sword he struck against, however, was old and worn-out.
Brrr.
Ugh!
The one holding the sword seemed to be standing directly opposite Kyle.
Protagonist versus Extra.
The Extra, Meyer, clad in rusty armor and a tattered cloak, spat out a mouthful of blood. The force had shaken his insides violently.
Meyer grinned, revealing his blood-stained teeth, as he faced Kyle, who was laughing maniacally.
“You bastard with three castles.”
A bastard with three castles.
The term “Continent’s Greatest Sword” was far more widely used than “Continent’s Greatest Knight.”
Snap.
At that moment, the confident smile Kyle had been wearing cracked. No, his smile twisted in an instant. Kyle’s radiant light dimmed, and his form distorted, sending cracks throughout the world, all emanating from him.
It was Kyle’s aura.
KUGUGUGUGU-!!!
The ground around Kyle groaned and sank. The aura he emitted alone seemed capable of collapsing space itself—it was a power truly beyond reason.
“Your tongue’s spicy, little brother.”
But Meyer did not falter. He had lived his life refusing to yield to such a monster. Even as his entire body felt torn apart by that overwhelming aura, he did not back down.
“Your star is wasted. A star like that is far too much for someone like you.”
[Kyle Garden: ★★★★★?]
Kyle twisted the corner of his mouth into a bizarre smile. That was the very essence of his inner nature.
“Then die.”
KWA-AAAAA!!!
Kyle’s aura pressed down on Meyer’s entire body. Meyer desperately resisted the sword. Blood poured from his mouth, and his skin was crushed by the aura, tearing and bleeding.
But Meyer did not give up.
“You think I’m still the Meyer who would die just because you told me to, you bastard?”
Clang!
Meyer dropped the sword in his hand. He then summoned all his accumulated skills.
[Garden Formal Swordsmanship (★)]
[Nangong Sword (★★★★)]
[White Crane Sword (★★★)] …
Dozens, hundreds of techniques.
All of them flashed in Meyer’s mind and disappeared.
Then, Meyer gathered them all into his raised hand. He reached toward the approaching Kyle—or rather, toward Kyle’s sword.
A smirk curled across Meyer’s lips.
“Finally… I’ve reached you.”
KWAANG!!!!
The impact lifted Meyer’s body into the air by almost a foot. He hit the ground with a thud. Then a wave of pain, as if his stomach were being ripped open and his insides torn, made yellow saliva drip from his mouth.
“U-UGH!!”
Meyer vomited the yellow bile from his empty stomach. Tears streamed from his eyes, and his trembling limbs could barely hold him up from the unbearable pain.
It felt like being hit by a giant truck.
Even in pain, Meyer blinked.
‘Truck?’
The word was unfamiliar, yet somehow deeply familiar. Despite not being struck in the head, a strange knowledge flowed into his mind, and he opened his eyes wide.
‘Reincarnation truck?’
He had indeed been hit by a truck. A truck that could weigh anywhere from 1 ton to several tons. Meyer remembered being hit while helping clear trash from a cart that had toppled on a crosswalk.
The sheer mass of the truck itself had been enough to devastate him—but that was all he remembered.
Then Meyer realized the wooden sword had caused the same ripping pain to his stomach. He wiped his mouth.
A mocking voice then pierced his ears.
“Young master. Didn’t I tell you this is a battlefield? If you kneel at something so trivial, next time your neck might be at risk.”
Looking up, Meyer saw a sneering man spinning a wooden sword in his hand. That sword had struck Meyer’s abdomen.
‘Gillot.’
Meyer remembered he was a knight of the family.
[Gillot Cant: ★☆☆☆☆]
The name and strange star rating glowed above Gillot’s head.
‘What the…’
Ugh.
But there was no time to dwell on it. Sharp pain shot through Meyer’s abdomen as if his body had reached its limit.
He remembered all of this. The relentless beatings, the physical abuse.
At the same time, the arms Meyer had placed on the ground buckled. The moment he remembered that, his mental grip snapped.
Meyer fell forward onto the floor, head first. He saw Gillot laughing mockingly at him as his consciousness went blank.
‘Crazy bastard…’
Meyer had been picking up trash.
He was not the only one crossing the street to collect scattered trash. A good deed, but only Meyer suffered misfortune.
Screeeeek!
KWAANG-!!!
A dump truck barreled through, hitting Meyer.
Just before being hit, the world shifted. Where the truck would have struck, the wooden sword appeared instead, and Meyer lost consciousness.
“Ugh…”
Sweating all over, Meyer raised himself, but collapsed again.
“Ughhh…”
His stomach felt as if it was being ripped open. Lifting his shirt revealed bandages wrapped around his abdomen—protection for the actual injury.
“It hurts… so much.”
Meyer stayed down, waiting for the sudden pain to subside. After thirty minutes, the pain eased. Biting his lips, he carefully got up.
“Ughhh…”
Tears welled in his eyes. Only after raising his upper body did he manage to look around.
And then…
“Huh?”
Meyer tilted his head. Strictly speaking, he was no longer the original Meyer. After being struck in the abdomen by Gillot’s wooden sword, memories of another person merged with his own, forming this new version of Meyer.
“Am I Park Yeon-ui, or am I Meyer?”
Park Yeon-ui.
30 years old.
A veteran Korean civil service exam candidate.
And Meyer.
19 years old.
The legitimate heir of the Garden family.
The combination had created this new version of Meyer. He looked around, puzzled.
“So they’re nobility, huh? But it’s barely better than a study room back home.”
Meyer was the legitimate heir of the Garden family, a viscount family ruling the Auwis region, the northern gateway to the empire’s capital, Okasum.
Despite this, the surroundings were decrepit.
Buildings over thirty years old.
Faded carpets and worn bedding.
The creaky bed, the dusty windows, spiderwebs on the ceiling—it was worse than a cramped study room in Noryangjin.
The answer, however, was easy to see.
“Is this really reincarnation?”
Meyer wanted to laugh at the joke, but the pain in his stomach snapped him awake. He frowned at the memories flooding back.
“He’s basically abandoned… faints at blood? Terrified of swords? Cries at people talking to him?”
A coward, scaredy-cat, fool.
Even as the heir, Meyer had been ostracized within his own family. He was timid and fearful, unfit for a family that revered swords.
Half-abandoned by his own family, he lived isolated in the oldest annex.
“So, even with potions and all, the treatment was just a bandage?”
A bandage was all the family gave, despite the near-fatal blow.
Meyer gritted his teeth against the pain.
“Then why was I being beaten with a sword?”
Meyer recalled that he rarely left the annex. And yet, he had been repeatedly forced into sparring, receiving beatings over and over—at least ten times. Otherwise, such fear would not have been ingrained in his mind.
Faces flashed by, from Gillot to unfamiliar strangers. At the end, the tall, handsome man appeared.
“Ugh…”
Just thinking about him made Meyer’s heart race. Trauma from deep in his mind. He barely whispered the man’s name.
“Kyle Garden.”
Kyle Garden—the foster son who had been taken in by the Garden family, now Meyer’s brother.
“Huh. So…”
Meyer reviewed his memories and confirmed his conclusion.
“It’s a mess. This sucker, happy to have a sibling, didn’t even realize he’d lose his place—and now look where it got him.”
A mess.
Meyer’s timidity was simple to explain.
He could not meet his father’s expectations, and seeing his father increasingly disappointed made him withdraw.
Lack of confidence.
For a noble, such weakness was almost a sin.
As Meyer continually showed shortcomings, his father withdrew support and affection, bringing in a foster son.
That foster son—Kyle Garden—was clever, handsome, and immediately favored.
Then things went wrong.
Kyle justified his actions as “helping his younger brother” but repeatedly humiliated Meyer through sparring and beatings, crushing the reputation of the legitimate heir.
To prevent Meyer from inheriting the family.
Kyle dominated public perception, leaving Meyer terrified.
The pain was not just in the stomach—it was all over Meyer’s body.
He was called out daily, beaten for one or two hours, while no one looked after him.
To the outside world, Kyle appeared as the devoted older brother helping a talentless sibling. Even his father favored Kyle more.
“The problem is, now I have to endure it.”
Fear spread across Meyer’s face. With Park Yeon-ui’s memories merged, Meyer realized only two outcomes awaited him:
Either die from the beatings,
Or be crippled from them.
To survive, he needed to break the cycle.
But Meyer was still a coward, and Kyle had his father’s trust. He needed a sharp reason, some way to overcome the situation.
“Status window!!!!”
Nothing happened.
“Quest window! Show me my talents! Isn’t there anything? Nothing?”
In novels, something always appears in situations like this. Could someone have sent him here just to die without it?
“Ughhh…”
He wanted to get up and search, but his stomach hurt too much. Still, he could not stay idle. As he struggled, something caught his eye.
“Newspaper?”
A yellowed, old newspaper rolled under the bed. It had fingerprints, signs of being frequently handled. Meyer read it automatically, staring intently.
[Volunteer Report: Though born on different days, three brothers resolved to die together on the same day…]
“Huh?”
It was a brief article. Unlike others with photos, this one was tiny, tucked into a corner.
Yet it felt familiar.
“Same day? Die together? Three brothers?”
The rest was too faded to read. But a strong sense of déjà vu lingered, oddly recalling Meyer’s—no, Park Yeon-ui’s—past obsessions.
Rumble!
While lost in thought, his stomach growled thunderously. The servants had been pulled away; even his father had stopped supporting him.
“Still hungry, even now?”
Even amid chaos, he was hungry. Painful yet hungry. Meyer groaned and struggled to sit up.
“Even if I die, I can’t starve.”
They say ghosts who die after eating look better—Meyer didn’t know if that applied here. Still, he managed to get off the bed, hunched over, clutching his stomach.
“Ugh… ughhh…”
He grabbed the door to push it open, still in excruciating pain.
