Chapter 1
The Genius Assassin is Reborn
A dense forest of towering trees pierced the night sky.
Blood from countless masked corpses stained the ground a deep red.
At the center of it all stood a man — Phantom — calmly adjusting his stance with a dagger in hand, his expression blank.
Reflected in the dagger’s mirror-like blade were the terrified faces of the masked men who had surrounded him.
From among the dozens of masked assassins encircling Phantom, a particularly large man stepped forward and spoke.
“007 — Phantom.”
“001 — Victor. I’m here to kill you.”
“How laughable. This isn’t your trap. It’s mine — laid out to kill you. [Dawn] has ordered your execution.”
Dawn, a mysterious assassin organization of the continent.
They claimed to protect peace and order from the shadows and maintain balance across the continent.
Phantom, codenamed 007, was a prodigious assassin and an executive member of Dawn.
A monster who had completed a thousand missions without a single failure.
Genius assassin.
The textbook of assassination.
A man of legendary talent.
The youngest executive in Dawn’s history.
Holder of countless titles.
Hearing Victor’s words, Phantom curled his lips into a cold smirk.
“Not Dawn — this is your doing, Victor. You’re a parasite who has corrupted the organization.”
As Phantom’s chilling gaze bore into him, Victor flinched.
“You knew?”
“Were you also responsible for killing my master?”
“000 — Shadow was the next biggest obstacle after you. We had no choice.”
For the first time, emotion flickered across Phantom’s face — rage.
“The organization has been tainted by your greed. We of Dawn must always remain neutral to protect the continent’s balance.”
“Such childish thinking. Why should a group with such overwhelming power merely act as judges? My goal is for Dawn to rule the continent!”
“That’s impossible. Because everyone here today… will be wiped out.”
The surrounding assassins paled in terror.
That was how overwhelming Phantom’s skill was — far above anyone present.
“As the rumors say… You really are a monster, Phantom. That’s why I must eliminate you — you’re a threat to my vision.”
“Do you truly believe you can take me on?”
Phantom’s eyes gleamed sharply, and Victor let out a bitter chuckle.
Technically, Phantom ranked below Victor in the organization. But everyone knew — Phantom was Dawn’s strongest.
Victor knew that, too.
“No… Which is why I came prepared.”
At that moment, a new wave of masked assassins emerged from the forest.
Their outfits differed slightly from the ones Phantom had already taken down.
Phantom furrowed his brows, slightly surprised.
“You brought the other executives… no — nearly all of them except me?”
“To kill someone like you, this much is necessary. Not even you can escape.”
“You’re the ones who won’t be escaping.”
Phantom reached into the air — and a white, transparent barrier spread outward, blanketing the entire forest in a dome of light.
A powerful barrier magic had been cast.
Phantom’s talents didn’t stop at assassination.
Had he chosen a different path in life, he could’ve become great at anything.
One such path he had secretly pursued… was magic.
“You can use magic too?!”
“Offer your hearts for the organization, insects.”
“This is the true path for Dawn’s future! Not even you can take all of us down! Surrender your head, Phantom!”
“After today… Dawn will cease to exist.”
“Attack!!”
At Victor’s command, waves of assassins charged at Phantom without pause.
A relentless, chaotic battle ensued within the barrier.
Even for the great Phantom, Victor’s overwhelming numbers — bolstered by other executives — made it a fierce fight.
But in the end, Phantom emerged victorious.
“Ghh—!”
Phantom’s dagger pierced Victor’s heart.
Victor slumped over, lifeless.
But Phantom, too, was not unscathed.
Thud.
He collapsed to the ground like a puppet with cut strings.
His opponents were not ordinary. Each one was skilled enough to be called a genius in their own right.
“This poison… I’ve never encountered anything like it.”
Purple splotches spread across his skin, crawling over his entire body.
Even with his expertise in poisons, he couldn’t identify or neutralize this one in time.
Especially not in his current state — one of his opponents had been a poison-specialist assassin.
‘Is this the end for me…?’
In truth, the reason for this bloodbath wasn’t anything grand.
It was revenge.
After losing his parents, Phantom had been raised by Shadow.
Shadow had become his new guardian — a shelter in the storm of war.
Though an assassin, Shadow had reawakened Phantom’s sense of family and warmth.
‘I wanted to retire… meet a pretty woman… get married… have kids… and live a happy life.’
A normal life.
A word that had nothing to do with assassins.
He had taken so many lives under orders from the organization — far too many to count.
‘This must be the price for my sins.’
He had killed people too easily.
Throughout his thousand missions, guilt had quietly festered.
Killing the innocent by command.
Wiping out entire villages.
Shattering happy families.
Even bringing entire nations to ruin.
Children screamed for their parents.
Parents cried hoarsely for their children.
Lovers watched each other die and lost the will to live.
‘I don’t deserve happiness. This is the punishment I was meant to receive.’
Tears welled in the eyes of the infamous cold-blooded assassin.
He had always longed for it — though he thought it was forbidden:
‘Living a normal life… is that really so hard?’
Cough!
Black blood gushed from his mouth.
His heartbeat began to slow.
His body stopped responding.
His sharp vision blurred.
‘If I’m reborn… I want to live a normal life like everyone else…’
With that final wish, Phantom closed his eyes.
His fiercely beating heart… stopped.
With the death of Phantom — Dawn’s last remaining survivor —
Dawn vanished from the continent.
***
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The sound of an alarm woke him.
‘I haven’t dreamed in a while.’
The final battle before his death.
He sometimes dreamt of his past life when exhausted.
‘Maybe I’ve been overdoing it lately.’
He hadn’t been sleeping well and was feeling the fatigue.
Dark circles under his eyes.
His whole body ached more than usual.
Still, he stretched and got up from bed, his face calm.
‘Let’s move, Kim Do-jun.’
Phantom had reincarnated.
Now, he lived under the name Kim Do-jun, in South Korea.
With full memories of his past life.
But in peaceful South Korea, the skills of an assassin weren’t very useful.
Well — they were, but in his current situation, he had very few opportunities to use them.
The reason was simple:
He was poor.
‘20 million won a month…’
That was the monthly hospital bill for his mother.
When Do-jun was about ten, his mother had an accident.
She was hit by a drunk driver while crossing the street late at night on her way home from work.
She didn’t die…
…but she was paralyzed from the waist down.
And that wasn’t the end of the tragedy.
‘Terminal lung cancer.’
It was discovered by accident during tests following an accident.
Since then, his mother had been staying in the hospital.
In the past, a terminal lung cancer diagnosis would have been a death sentence, but with today’s medical advancements, life could be prolonged without much issue.
It was, of course, a good thing that his mother hadn’t passed away.
But that, too, was a problem.
“Money.”
Already, nine years had passed like that.
They had received some insurance money at the time of the accident, but the monthly costs of chemotherapy and hospitalization were beyond imagination.
Naturally, the insurance money quickly ran out, and even the little assets they had were exhausted. Recently, they had even gone into debt.
His father was working tirelessly on his own, but even then, it was difficult to keep up with the costs.
“Was dying in my past life not enough to pay for my sins?”
Before the accident, Dojun had been living the happiness he had always dreamed of.
It felt like life couldn’t get any better.
Dojun felt like all of this had happened because of him.
As if he were finally paying the price for the countless murders he had committed in his past life.
“I need to make money.”
To live the normal, peaceful, and happy life he desired—he needed money.
Without money, happiness was impossible.
Especially in this place called South Korea, on Earth.
“Please let me work part-time.”
That was what Dojun, now a middle schooler, said while going around to different restaurants.
And so, from middle school onwards, Dojun began taking on whatever part-time jobs he could find to earn money.
But the money a middle schooler could make had its limits.
He wanted to become an adult quickly.
That way, he could legally earn even more money.
“More… I need to make more!!”
He didn’t want to make money through theft or murder anymore.
In this life, Dojun had gained the happy family he had once wished for.
If he had money, he could protect them.
But without it, he would lose his mother.
He wanted to protect her.
But to be happy, he needed money.
A lot of money.
“Oppa, are you awake? You have to go to school.”
His younger sister, Kim Jiyeon, called out from outside his room.
“Yeah, I’m up.”
Dojun put on his school uniform, stepped into the living room, and asked his sister:
“Where’s Dad?”
“He’s not back yet.”
Currently, their father was juggling three jobs.
Milk deliveries at dawn.
An office job during the day.
And a chauffeur gig after work.
Thinking about his father struggling so hard just to pay his mother’s hospital bills, Dojun couldn’t afford to waste a single thing.
After his father came back from delivering milk and had breakfast, Dojun had already set the table before heading off to school.
As he walked slowly and arrived at the school gate, a luxury imported sedan pulled up.
As soon as one of the boys got out of the car, he ran up to Dojun.
It was one of Dojun’s friends, Lee Junseong.
“Dojun, Dojun~”
“Your eyes look dead. Did you stay up all night again?”
“Yeah, yesterday was my Gold rank promotion match. Ugh… just thinking about it pisses me off.”
These days, Lee Junseong was completely hooked on the VR game Night of Legend.
“You ran into another troll, huh?”
Trolls.
People who intentionally ruined games.
As soon as the topic came up, Junseong started spitting mad.
“How is it possible to get trolls in every game? I just needed to win 3 out of 5 matches to rank up, and I got trolls in all three games! Does that even make sense?”
“Junseong.”
“What?”
“If the same person is always at the scene of a murder, wouldn’t they be the prime suspect?”
Hearing that, Junseong flailed his arms in protest.
“No, I told you—I played well, okay?!”
“Sure, sure. Let’s head in. Class is about to start.”
“Tch. During break time, I’m going to explain everything. You better be ready.”
“Alright, alright.”
Dojun chuckled softly as he walked through the school gates.
