As if the nurses around Ernest were mothers spotting a discount on a product at the supermarket, his bed was pushed from room to room for various examinations, resembling a shopping cart.

They took blood samples from his body, checked the insides of Ernest’s body with an MRI, and used various other medical devices.

The entire examination process took a whole day.

Finally, when the entire process was over, Ernest was returned to the room where he was first admitted.

“You can rest here for a while. When the results of your examination are ready, we will inform you.”

Olivia stood near Ernest’s bed, jotting down notes on a paper. As if Olivia suddenly remembered something, she asked, squinting her eyes.

“Oh, by the way. Do you have any family members we can contact as your guardian? The hospital has tried to find your guardian, but we did our best and couldn’t find anyone suitable.”

“I don’t think so,” Ernest answered, forcing a smile. “Has anyone been looking for me in these two years?”

“... No one.”

Seeing Olivia’s furrowed brows and narrowed eyes, Ernest automatically speculated about what was going on in her head. ‘Is she suspecting me of being a criminal?’ That’s how Ernest interpreted Olivia’s facial expression.

“Don’t worry; I’m not a criminal or an international fugitive,” Ernest clarified before Olivia could ask.

“...”

Olivia couldn’t respond to Ernest’s words. Her eyes widened, and her head tilted to the side, causing her long hair to cascade down like a fountain.

She wondered why Ernest concluded that she was suspicious of him being a criminal. In reality, Olivia was just curious because no one had ever visited him.

Throughout the two years she has been caring for Ernest, she has always sympathized with his fate.

Olivia bit her lower lip as if trying to restrain every word that wanted to come out of her mouth.

She wanted to ask about Ernest’s background, but even though Ernest always smiled, the aura he exuded seemed to say that he wouldn’t share his past with someone he just met.

Aware that prying into a patient’s past unrelated to their medical condition was an inappropriate action, Olivia chose to adhere to her professional duties as a doctor.

Leaving Ernest’s room, Olivia thought that what she should focus on was treating the patient until he recovered.

***

Alone in the patient’s ward, Ernest began to organize his complex thoughts.

During the journey, as he was wheeled into various examination rooms, he looked into the rooms of many patients. Unlike Ernest, who was alone, almost everyone had their family members with them.

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Ernest was an orphan—a child victim of war, but he had foster parents. He had hoped that someone would find him and visit him. ‘At least old man Yang Jian... Ah, what am I thinking?’

Ernest regretted having such thoughts.

After all, he didn’t deserve to think like that because two years ago, Ernest decided to leave his foster family in China due to shame and self-loathing.

All those feelings emerged because of his body’s condition since childhood or since he started living with his foster family.

The Curse of Pain..

He called his body’s condition like that.

From the moment he woke up from a vegetative state, he had felt pain that he hadn’t experienced for two years. Even now, that pain continued to gnaw at all the pain receptors in his body. It was a permanent and continuous pain that always clung to his body.

Maybe it would be fine if it was just pain, but that pain wasn’t just pain when it reached a certain point; it hindered his activities.

He couldn’t think too seriously because it would make his head feel like it was about to explode. He also couldn’t do strenuous activities because it would make him feel like his body was being mutilated.

If he forced himself to do strenuous activities or think too hard, he would faint even if he managed to endure the pain in his body.

Without a usable body and mind, he automatically became trash, and he couldn’t even work typically to earn money, let alone Awaken and become a hunter.

Therefore, two years ago, he decided to run away from the foster family that raised him in China.

At that time, his mind was only filled with the idea of how to escape from the existing reality. Escape from the pain he always felt and escape from the scorn of friends and foster family members.

He asked Olivia if someone had been looking for him. Actually, it wasn’t just to hope that someone would visit him, but Ernest was worried that the organization where he owed money would break in to meet him.

Ernest’s goal at that time was just to find a little happiness before his soul left this world. But he never thought that his soul would actually leave this world, not to the afterlife, as his initial shadowy self did when his body died, but his soul went to the Netherworld.

While sitting on the bed, he looked at the night sky and tried to think about what he should do now.

First, he wasn’t sure if he could go back to the Netherworld and seek revenge against Crowley and the other Seven Demon Wings members or against the mastermind behind his death, whom he still had no clues about.

Not just for revenge, he actually wanted to go to the Netherworld to see Lilu and make sure she was okay or not.

‘It would be a shame if my main puppet died there.’

Although he felt an odd connection between the Netherworld and Earth, he didn’t know how to go to the Netherworld or even have any clues about the way to go there.

So, his current thoughts narrowed down to thinking about what he should do on Earth.

‘Return to my foster family after two years of running away?’

That wouldn’t be a wise decision. It would be great if he returned successfully, but if he returned in a pitiful condition like this, Ernest was sure he would only be ridiculed.

‘Awakened and become a hunter?’

Indeed, becoming a hunter would make him rich, and the chances of obtaining information about how to go to the Netherworld were also high. But he couldn’t do that because of the curse on his body. As long as he had curse of pain., he couldn’t Awaken and become a Hunter.

‘Can I do something with my current body condition?’

‘Is there a way to cure the curse on my body? Especially with some knowledge from the Netherworld.’

Without thinking further, he tried.

First, he used demon-like Mana processing techniques, but there was no reciprocal reaction from the Mana in the air or from Ernest’s own body.

Finally, Ernest remembered something.

When Ernest was in the Netherworld, he obtained a magic scroll containing cultivation techniques specifically for humans.

He got the magic scroll from a treasure chest belonging to the demon ruler of the Duskrend region, which was the first region that Ernest and Lilu conquered.

‘Come to think of it, why is there a magic scroll specifically for humans in a land inhabited only by demon races?’

That question suddenly popped into his head.

What was even stranger was that Ernest could only read the language in that magic scroll by himself—a former human. More precisely, the technique was written in ancient Chinese.