Five minutes earlier. 2:25 PM.
Kim Soo-hyun wasn't supposed to be in the dungeon. Janitors didn't have clearance. But Kim Soo-hyun wasn't really a janitor, and locks had never been much of an obstacle for someone who'd spent twenty years accessing classified dungeons.
He'd entered through a maintenance access point forty minutes ago, taking a parallel route that brought him to within fifty meters of Safe Zone Beta. Close enough to intervene if needed. Far enough to remain undetected.
His modified mana sensor vibrated against his chest. The breach was beginning.
He moved faster, his sealed stats still allowing him speed that would shock anyone watching. The dungeon's twisted passages blurred past. He'd memorized the layout, could navigate it blind if necessary.
Then reality tore open, and he felt it—the unmistakable signature of demonic mana.
Not just any demon. A Demon Lord.
*Malgrin*, he recognized instantly. The corruption specialist. Rank 72. In his original timeline, Malgrin had killed three hundred hunters during the First Wave before an S-Rank finally put him down.
And now he was here, ten years early, because Soo-hyun's interference had drawn him out.
The screams started.
Soo-hyun ran.
---
He reached the passage junction leading to Safe Zone Beta just in time to see students fleeing in panic. Most ran the wrong direction—toward sealed exits where they'd be trapped and slaughtered.
But eight students ran a different way. Led by a girl with a sword who moved with purpose, not panic.
*Sera*, he recognized with fierce pride. *She remembered. She's leading them to the safe room.*
Good. That bought him time.
He needed to make a decision. The demon would chase Sera's group—they were the "anomaly" that had drawn it here. The other students fleeing toward sealed exits would die, but they'd die whether he helped them or not. The demon was too fast, too powerful.
But Sera's group had a chance. A slim one, but a chance.
If he moved now. If he stopped holding back. If he revealed even a fraction of what he truly was.
Soo-hyun checked his sealed status:
**[Current Limitations]**
**[Physical Stats: 95% sealed]**
**[Mana Capacity: 97% sealed]**
**[Available Power: Equivalent to C-Rank hunter]**
**[SSS-Rank Techniques: Accessible but limited by available mana]**
**[WARNING: Breaking seal risks identity exposure and timeline corruption]**
C-Rank power versus a B-Rank Demon Lord. Suicide by any rational measure.
But Kang Minho had never been particularly rational when lives were at stake.
*Besides*, he thought grimly, drawing the combat knife he'd hidden under his janitor uniform, *I've fought worse odds.*
He moved through the shadows toward the reinforced chamber where Sera was making her stand.
---
Present moment. 2:33 PM.
The demon stepped into the chamber, and Sera's world narrowed to pure survival instinct.
It moved with the casual confidence of a predator that knew it had already won. Its corruption aura spread like poison, making the air thick and hard to breathe. Two students collapsed immediately, overwhelmed by the demonic presence.
"SPREAD OUT!" Sera commanded, her voice cutting through the fear. "Don't bunch up! Make it work for each kill!"
The demon tilted its head, almost amused. "**CLEVER SPECIMEN. TACTICAL THINKING. UNUSUAL FOR F-RANK.**"
It lunged.
Sera barely dodged, the claw missing her by inches and gouging three deep furrows in the stone wall. She countered with a thrust toward its side—perfect form, maximum efficiency, exactly as she'd been taught.
Her blade scraped across its skin and bounced off without leaving a mark.
*Of course*, she thought desperately. *F-Rank weapon against B-Rank demon. Might as well be hitting it with a stick.*
"AIM FOR THE JOINTS!" she screamed to the others. "EYES! ANYWHERE THE SKIN IS THINNER!"
Jin-woo tried. He was brave, she'd give him that. Rushed in with his sword aimed at the demon's knee joint.
The demon's tail—Sera hadn't even seen it had a tail—whipped around and sent Jin-woo flying into the wall with a sickening crack. He slid down and didn't move.
Six students left.
The demon's attention fixed on Sera again. "**YOU. ANOMALY. WHY DO YOU FIGHT? DEATH IS INEVITABLE.**"
"Because I'm too stubborn to die quietly!" She dove under another claw swipe, rolled, came up slashing at its ankle. Again, no damage. But she was learning its patterns. The way it telegraphed attacks. The slight pause before each lunge.
*I can't hurt it*, she realized. *But maybe I can survive long enough for help to arrive.*
If help was coming.
If the janitor was really out there.
If this wasn't just a desperate student's last stand before inevitable death.
The demon seemed to read her thoughts. It smiled, showing far too many teeth. "**YOUR TEACHER ABANDONS YOU. YOU DIE ALONE. ACCEPT—**"
The demon stopped mid-sentence.
Its head jerked toward the doorway, eyes narrowing. "**IMPOSSIBLE.**"
And then he was there.
Not bursting through dramatically. Not announcing himself. Just... there. Standing in the doorway with a simple combat knife, wearing a janitor's uniform that was completely ridiculous in the context of a demon-infested dungeon.
Kim Soo-hyun. The weird janitor who'd trained her in secret.
Looking at the demon with eyes that held something ancient and infinitely dangerous.
"Get the students to the back wall," he said quietly, not looking at Sera. "Stay behind me. Don't interfere."
"You're just a—" she started.
"I said GET BACK."
The command in his voice brooked no argument. Sera grabbed Min-ji and the others, dragging them to the chamber's rear wall.
The demon stared at the newcomer, its posture shifting from casual predator to wary fighter. "**YOU. THE REAL ANOMALY. THE HIDDEN POWER. CLEVER. DISGUISED AS NOTHING.**"
"Disguised as what I need to be," Soo-hyun replied, moving into the chamber. His stance looked casual, but Sera recognized it now—the perfect economy of motion, the absolute control. "You made a mistake coming here, Malgrin."
The demon's eyes widened. "**YOU KNOW MY NAME. IMPOSSIBLE. NO HUMAN KNOWS—**"
"I know a lot of things. Including exactly seventeen ways to kill you with a butter knife." Soo-hyun rolled his shoulders. "Lucky for you, I brought an actual combat knife. Makes this easier."
"**ARROGANT. YOUR MANA SIGNATURE IS SEALED. C-RANK AT BEST. YOU CANNOT—**"
Soo-hyun moved.
Not fast enough to blur. Not teleportation. Just... movement so precise, so efficient, that he crossed the distance to the demon before it finished its sentence.
His knife flashed.
The demon blocked with its arm, but Soo-hyun's blade wasn't aiming for the arm. That was a feint. His real target was the exposed nerve cluster at the demon's elbow joint—a weakness so specific that only someone with decades of demon-hunting experience would know it existed.
The knife connected. Sank in two inches.
The demon screamed—actually screamed—and stumbled back, its left arm spasming uncontrollably.
"Seventeen ways," Soo-hyun repeated calmly. "That was method three. Want to see the others?"
Malgrin's expression shifted from confidence to genuine concern. "**WHAT ARE YOU?**"
"A janitor. Keep up." Soo-hyun attacked again.
What followed wasn't a fight. It was a clinic.
Soo-hyun moved through the demon's defenses like water through cracks. Every strike hit joints, nerve clusters, weak points that shouldn't exist but did if you knew exactly where to look. His knife was F-Rank—the cheapest standard issue blade—but in his hands it became a surgical instrument.
The demon tried its corruption aura. Soo-hyun's mana circulation automatically purged it—a technique that required perfect control but zero power. Mental attacks bounced off mental disciplines honed through two decades of combat.
Physical attacks? The demon was faster and stronger, but Soo-hyun moved like he could see three seconds into the future, always exactly where attacks weren't.
"**IMPOSSIBLE!**" the demon roared, frustration overriding its strategic thinking. "**YOUR MANA IS SEALED! YOU'RE C-RANK!**"
"Power and skill aren't the same thing," Soo-hyun said, ducking under a wild claw swipe. "You have power. I have experience." His knife flashed again, this time cutting the tendon in the demon's right leg. "And experience trumps power when the power doesn't know how to use itself."
The demon collapsed to one knee, both its left arm and right leg compromised. It was wounded, frustrated, and starting to realize it might actually lose this fight.
"**YOU... WHO ARE YOU REALLY?**"
Soo-hyun's expression never changed. "I already told you. I'm a janitor. I clean up messes. You're a mess. Do the math."
Behind him, Sera and the students watched in stunned silence. This was the man who'd mopped floors and cleaned windows. The one who'd been invisible, unremarkable, forgettable.
He was fighting a B-Rank Demon Lord with a C-Rank power level and winning.
*This isn't possible*, Sera thought. *Unless...*
Unless he'd been hiding so much more than anyone realized.
The demon tried one last desperate move—a full-power corruption blast that would kill everyone in the chamber, including itself if necessary. Its final revenge.
Soo-hyun's hand moved in a pattern Sera recognized from one of the advanced combat manuals—the Heavenly Dragon's Sealing Strike. A technique so complex that the manual said it required SSS-Rank mana control to execute properly.
He executed it perfectly with C-Rank power.
His knife touched the demon's chest, and suddenly all that gathering corruption energy... dispersed. Just vanished, the mana flow disrupted at a fundamental level.
Malgrin stared at his chest in disbelief. "**HOW—**"
"Because I've killed forty-seven Demon Lords in my lifetime," Soo-hyun said quietly. "You're number forty-eight."
He drove the knife into the precise center of Malgrin's demonic core.
The demon's eyes went wide. "**FORTY-SEVEN... THEN YOU'RE... THE DRAGON SLA—**"
It never finished the sentence. Its body disintegrated into ash, leaving only a B-Rank mana crystal behind.
Silence filled the chamber.
Soo-hyun stood there for a moment, breathing slightly harder than normal—the only sign that the fight had cost him anything. Then he turned to the students.
"Everyone alive?"
Six voices confirmed. Six out of fifteen. Better than the zero he'd feared.
"Good. Stay here. More demons might be in the dungeon. I'll check the perimeter and signal for extraction." He started toward the door.
"WAIT!" Sera stepped forward. "Who are you? Really?"
Soo-hyun paused at the doorway, his back to her. For a long moment, he said nothing.
Then: "I'm someone who couldn't save everyone. But I saved you. That's enough."
He left before she could ask anything else.
Min-ji grabbed Sera's arm. "Did... did that really just happen? Did the janitor just kill a demon?"
"Yes," Sera said quietly, staring at the doorway where he'd disappeared. "I think the academy janitor just saved all our lives."
"But how? He moved like... like..."
"Like someone who's done this thousands of times before," Sera finished. "Like someone who's not really a janitor at all."
The pieces were starting to come together in her mind. The combat knowledge. The perfect techniques. The way he'd known exactly what was coming. The way he'd fought a Demon Lord with sealed power and won.
*Who are you really, Janitor Kim?*
She had a feeling she was just beginning to understand the answer.
---
**[QUEST COMPLETE]**
**[Demon Lord Malgrin - ELIMINATED]**
**[Class F Casualties: 9 dead, 6 survived]**
**[Han Sera Survival: SUCCESS]**
**[Identity Compromise Level: 23% (Manageable)]**
**[Guardian's Arsenal: UNLOCKED]**
**[Timeline Stabilization: IN PROGRESS]**
**[NEW TITLE EARNED: The Hidden Protector]**
**[ACHIEVEMENT: First Demon Lord Kill (Second Timeline)]**
Soo-hyun leaned against the dungeon wall outside the chamber, allowing himself thirty seconds of rest. His sealed body was screaming in protest. That fight had pushed him to his absolute limits. If Malgrin had been any stronger, or if he'd made even one mistake...
But he hadn't. Twenty years of experience had carried him through.
His comm device—the real one, not the academy-issued fake—buzzed. Emergency services were inbound. The breach had triggered multiple alarms. Hunter Association teams were mobilizing.
He needed to be gone before they arrived. Before anyone started asking questions about how a janitor happened to be in a restricted dungeon during a Class F practical.
Time to disappear back into his cover identity.
Just another mysterious survivor of the breach. Just another person who got lucky.
Nobody would ever suspect that the mild-mannered janitor was actually a regressed SSS-Rank hunter who'd just killed his first Demon Lord of this timeline with 97% of his power sealed.
*Forty-eight*, he corrected himself with grim satisfaction as he slipped into the shadows. *Number forty-eight.*
Only seventy-one more to go.