Chapter 2

Book possession and otherworld travel have three basic moral principles:

1. Even if you’ve never learned the language, you’re allowed to understand and speak it.

2. No one persecutes a Korean’s black hair and black eyes.

3. At least one familiar character appears the moment you arrive.

Whoever tossed me into The Book of Irkus obeyed none of these rules. It’s honestly impressive to fail all three with such perfect balance.

I realized not long after falling into this world that it was, in fact, inside The Book of Irkus.

At first, I couldn’t even tell whether this was possession or dimensional travel. Even as someone from the 21st century, I’d never been close to fantasy novels, so I wasn’t good with the terminology to begin with. If it were possession, I should have entered someone else’s body—but I was still in my original body as Han Yuwan. But calling it dimensional travel felt strange too; even though I had only read volume one, this place resembled the world described in The Book of Irkus far too much.

After about three days, I gave up trying to decide whether this was possession, dimensional travel, or an isekai leap.

In typical old-fashioned fantasy-novel fashion, the sky above the Epenheim Continent—where I landed—had three moons.

No matter how you try to deny reality, there is no place on Earth where you can look up and see three moons. I was a prodigy, so I quickly accepted that the place I woke up in after being hit by a truck was not modern Korea. What else could I do? There were three moons right in front of me.

Of course, even after realizing I’d fallen into The Book of Irkus, I was still utterly disoriented.

Since I had been on my way to take the CSAT, I arrived in this world wearing my school uniform and fell straight into the lake located at the center of the imperial palace garden. If someone didn’t panic in that situation, they’d be the real anomaly.

If I had been over four hundred years old at the time, I would’ve looked up at the sky and said, “Hey, ever heard of respecting your elders? Drop me gently, you bastards,” while flipping off the heavens. But at nineteen, I had no idea how to react.

I’d spent a third of my life in an all-boys middle school and all-boys high school filled with black-haired, black-eyed kids, and now I was surrounded by people with hair and eye colors so vibrant and diverse it made my head spin.
Not only could I not speak their language, but the sight of someone with plain black hair like mine naturally shocked them. Before I could gather myself, I was immediately grabbed by the palace soldiers, having fallen right into the middle of the imperial palace garden.

At the time, I didn’t know why they were taking me away—now, of course, it’s obvious. I had trespassed in the imperial palace. If a person suddenly falls from the sky, well… arresting them first is the normal response.

My memory of being dragged before the Emperor—less than a day after arriving in The Book of Irkus—is clearer than most of my other memories from that time. I can’t describe exactly what I felt, but I definitely cursed to myself the entire time.

Other people who transmigrate into unfinished novels get pampered, worshipped, and treated like saints. I should have known my luck was rotten from the moment I got hit by a truck on CSAT day.

Standing before an Emperor who looked every bit the tyrant, I was given two choices:

1. Be neatly executed for trespassing in the imperial palace.

2. Live as a rare “pet human” with black hair and black eyes to cheer up the Empress, Yekarina, who had lately been feeling quite depressed.

To call these choices would make even Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” bow its head in shame.

So what will it be? Die here right away, or die later after cheering up the Empress?
A wonderfully difficult question. Harder than the final short-answer math problem on the CSAT.

The golden-haired Emperor was absurdly handsome—but having already studied Yeonsan-gun in Korean history, I could only see him as a madman.

He wasn’t Yeonsan-gun, but he might as well have been. The most “Korean” things truly are the most “isekai” things. This Yeonsan-gun-reincarnate Emperor smiled benevolently as he gave me my so-called choices.

Of course, at the time, I didn’t understand a word of what he said, so I picked option 2 more or less at random. Option 1 felt like the wrong answer.

I survived—but ended up with a collar around my neck as the Empress’s pet human.

A Korean high-school senior transported to another world is supposed to be overpowered. Instead, I started off as a slave.

????????????

[Yuan. Someone’s here to see you.]

“Sigh… who the hell is it this time?”

[Who knows? It’s been five years since anyone showed up. Last time was that lunatic magician begging you to take him as a disciple.]

“Five years isn’t that long. How did he even get into the forest? A normal person shouldn’t be able to enter.”

[He broke through the barrier at the entrance.]

“With magic?”

[No. His mana capacity is tremendous, but he isn’t a proper mage yet. It seems he instinctively used magic.]

“Is that supposed to be some mystical oak-spirit nonsense like, ‘It’s made of oak, but not actually a tree’?”

I had been about to fix my bed with restoration magic and go back to sleep when Gilbert, the oak spirit, sent me an intrusion signal.

This is why humans need to die quickly—life gets too bothersome. Even living a mere hundred years fills your life with endless enemies, and after four hundred years, I had far too many to count on both hands.

That unhelpful oak spirit insisted it wasn’t because of my age but because of my personality, but I disagreed.

Most long-lived races in this world eventually died from being stabbed by someone. Dragons, for example—dragon slayers would constantly show up, sneak into their lairs, and cut their heads off while they were peacefully sleeping.

[The intruder is a child. Looks about twelve in human age.]

“Did his parents abandon him?”

[I’m not sure. No one else seems to be nearby except the kid.]

“Then leave him alone. After wandering for ten days, he’ll either find the exit or starve to death.”

If I were still nineteen, I would’ve run out immediately to take him to an orphanage, but I was four hundred years old now. To a century-old elder, even someone in their twenties is a child—let alone a twelve-year-old. Absolutely not my problem.

Besides, the Southern Forest where I lived was not a place a normal child could enter.

It had no special name—just “the Southern Forest.” It served as the border between the Robein Empire and the Kingdom of Kaman, and housed a colony of stubborn, human-hating tree spirits.

Tree spirits like Gilbert disliked humans—not mildly disliked, but actively despised them.

Most non-human races already disliked humans, but tree spirits were extreme. Honestly, I couldn’t blame them. Humans chopped wood, destroyed forests, and constantly set things on fire—anyone would hate them.

Fortunately, tree spirits, while eccentric, weren’t aggressive enough to shout, “Exterminate all humans!”
Instead of attacking intruders directly, they preferred turning the forest into a maze to starve them to death. Supposedly, it allowed them to extract more nutrients from the corpse.

According to Dane, the ash-tree spirit, humans were inherently a nuisance. And though I was human, he wasn’t wrong.

Gilbert—gentler than most tree spirits—still helped chase away stray intruders simply because he found them bothersome.

Even humans, who had chopped down trees for centuries, had enough conscience not to cross the Southern Forest. Though they fought endlessly over ownership, no one dared traverse it. No one wanted to die a meaningless death in the woods.

But a child with no parents or guardians? Wandering into the Southern Forest alone? Breaking through the barrier I set myself? Whether knowingly or unknowingly, he had entered a perfect place to die.

So I intended to ignore this would-be corpse. If he wanted to die on his own, that wasn’t my responsibility. I wasn’t killing him—he wandered in himself.

I planned to sleep a little more and, if I woke up in between, go on a small birthday outing with Gilbert to commemorate my four-hundredth year.

But Gilbert—who usually would’ve said, “Ignore the little intruder, he’s not worth the trouble”—reacted strangely.

Though he was a thoughtful oak spirit, he was still a tree spirit and disliked humans. He had never once suggested we save an intruder.

[Yuan, that child… I think we should help him.]

“Help him?”

Never in all my decades in the Southern Forest had a tree spirit said such a thing.

This was the moment I realized the intruder wasn’t an ordinary human. Tree spirits were far more sensitive than humans.

“Why? I’ve done enough volunteer work to last a lifetime—150 years of it.”

[Dane said that child is a descendant of a witch.]

Dane, one of the younger tree spirits here, was—unlike a typical ash spirit—hot-tempered and violent. He always ran out first, tied intruders up by their ankles, or blocked paths. Not because he was young, but because he was naturally vicious. If all tree spirits were like Dane, humanity would’ve gone extinct long ago.

The fact that that Dane bothered to identify the intruder and report it to Gilbert instead of killing him immediately was strange. Normally, he would’ve detained the intruder, starved him, buried the corpse, and called it a day.

[Other than being a witch’s descendant, Dane didn’t say much. I think we should check for ourselves.]

In this world, witches and mages weren’t shunned. In modern terms, they were like mathematicians or scientists—smart, occasionally annoying, but useful because they developed convenient everyday spells.

Technically speaking, witches and mages were rarer than ordinary people. But there were still more witches and mages than black-haired, black-eyed people. Truly fitting for a Korean-written fantasy novel.

Even so, Dane would never spare a human intruder just because they were “rare.”

When he first met me—the only Great Sage in the entire continent—he insisted on killing me immediately. Had all tree spirits been like him, humans wouldn’t exist anymore.

“Yekarina’s descendant?”

If Dane was urging Gilbert to look into the intruder personally, then that child was no ordinary witch’s descendant. They were likely at least related to Empress Yekarina, who once raised me as her pet human—or they were the protagonist of this world.

Gilbert’s branches waved faintly up and down. A sign of confirmation.
For the first time in ages, something sparked interest in my dull life.

A descendant of Yekarina—but not a witch.
A “non-witch descendant of Yekarina” was something I had never seen before in all these centuries.

A four-hundredth birthday gift had walked straight into my home.

Dear God, have You finally decided to let me die? Thank You.