Managing to ignore the extreme heat, Minato Namikaze, traversed past the many destroyed buildings and streets of this fiery hellhole. He was honestly surprised his skin hadn't started tearing off from the intense heat of this plain.
'This must be hell...'
During his first few moments here it didn't take long before he was attacked by some demonic looking monster vulture and overtime, as he continued exploring, he encountered more of its kind. Ranging from demonic looking bulls and wolves to walking skeletons. He wouldn't be shocked to find out this was the belly of the Reaper or his punishment for damning his own son to be the vessel of a literal fox demon in the real world, the same fox that he had sealed within himself.
But there was always this nagging that he wasn't actually dead (even though he really should be) and that was because he could still use his chakra—low as it may be—and that shouldn't be possible, at least that's what he figured.
"You know...a guy can't just be left to his own thoughts around here!" Minato jumped away to avoid a giant slamming onto the decimated street he was walking on. He stuck horizontally to the side of the building thanks to his chakra control. A rasengan slowly formed in the palm of his hand. He leaped off the building using body flicker and slammed the spiraling sphere right on the red skinned giant's cranium, taking it down in one fell swoop.
This has been a pattern for the past few days, weeks, months? It was hard to track time without a day and night cycle...just fires everywhere the eye could see and a red sky above with a perpetual full moon in orbit. A thought that he has been reoccurring since the moment he regained consciousness reared its ugly head back at him again.
'This must be hell…'
The second clue for his alive status was the fact that he could still get fatigued and well...bleed. He glanced at the tear in his pants from one of his first encounters with the natives of this fiery hellscape, the disgusting gash had long ago healed thanks to the Nine tails chakra. He had designed the tetragram seal on his belly the same way he did on his son, to have the nine tails own chakra funnel in overtime and blend in with his own chakra reserves. It had the added bonus of giving him a healing factor.
Thinking back on the encounter where he acquired his now non-existent wound, the demons had caught him in ambush with their overwhelming numbers. However, he managed to regroup and take them down with his overwhelming speed and Flying Thunder God technique. They weren't much trouble for him at the time —or even now— but he desperately needed to recover his chakra properly and get some much needed sleep.
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A few hours later
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Rumbling was his first warning and the second was the searing heat entering the building. He quickly flickered outside and watched as the beam of fire erased a massive portion of the building he had taken refuge in.
A serpent the size of 15m with razor sharp fangs and glowing yellow eyes glared furiously at Minato. Seeing the black smoke leaving its mouth clued the Yellow Flash in at whom fired the flames at him.
'This is really annoying.' he grit his teeth. He had finally gotten some rest and was able to recover a bit more chakra so he reached into his back pouch and pulled out a custom designed kunai knife.
Throwing the kunai with his FTG sealing formula on at the serpent's head, he teleported. Slashing cleanly through its eye, he stood ten toes on its head as it flailed around in pain, using chakra to maintain his balance. Jumping off, he managed to pierce its underbelly with his three pronged kunai whilst sliding down to break his fall. He had bisected the serpent in half by the time he reached the ground.
The serpent's death only prompted more monsters to begin climbing out of nowhere. Minato, seeing that the numbers weren't in his favor, reached into his pouch for some smoke bombs to make the encounter more in his favor. Finding only two he figured it would have to do and let them hit the floor causing a column of smoke to rise up obscuring his figure.
Two kunai left the smoke aiming right for the group of monsters ahead. Once they were close enough he teleported and slashed, teleported to his other kunai and slashed. He continued to do this until all his enemies were vanquished and all they had seen before their deaths was a flash of yellow.
Standing over piles and piles of corpses, a depressing thought trickled to the forefront of Minato's weary mind.
'This is my new home it would seem...'
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"That light?" Minato murmured under his breath. It was definitely a new development. There was a huge beam of light that shone down on one of the tallest towers in this hell. Minato had to crane his neck up just to view the entirety of its scale even from so far away.
Something had changed and he could feel it in his bones. Closing his eyes and expanding his senses he was able to spot several energy signatures convening towards his location at high speeds meaning that the monsters had discerned his presence despite his best attempts at concealing it.
"The numbers are doable. Especially now that I've recovered nearly all of my chakra."
Rising up from his cross legged stance he moved out the demolished building he had taken refuge in and body flickered from rooftop to rooftop at beyond mach speeds. If someone were to try and spot him all they would see would be a yellow flash.
Standing atop a building, his white hokage cape fluttering in the hot wind, looking down on the demon dog thing secluded from the rest, it would be his first target.
Flickering down, he made his presence known to the demon dog. It wasted no time charging forward, its canines barred. His sage eyes gazed apathetically at the mutt, pulling out a singular kunai and meeting the beast head on. It was only a single exchange but afterwards the demon mutt was ripped in half.
The others soon noticed, probably smelling the blood in the air, and pounced on the blonde. However, he was simply too fast and blitzed past all of them without issue. When the demons realized he was out of sight, blood sprayed and their heads flew clean off in different directions.
"Now, what is that light all about?"
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His sage mode had long since dissipated as he made his way towards the golden light in the sky. His body flicker technique made him a blur to any demons looking to strike him down and it wasn't too long before reached the summit of the tower, seconds in fact.
He observed the tower's light sprouting from the summit all the way into the heavens above. Motioning to touch the stream of golden light, "Ah!" he retracted his hand as soon as he made contact with the light, seeing that it gave him third degree burns.
Suddenly, a large shadowy figure emerged from the other side and the blonde had nanoseconds to react before being blown completely off the building. Soaring through the air he swiftly rotated his body and used his fine mastery of chakra control to stick to the high-rise office window opposite the massive tower he'd been launched away from.
'What's going on here?' Minato thought in alarm as waves of dark shadows burst forth from the light and started scampering across the streets below eliminating any and every demon in sight. His senses picking up on the distinct, cold feeling of death their energies gave off.
It was an unholy sight to behold as he watched the slaughter fest from his vantage point. The demons didn't stand a chance against whatever these shadows of death were and it wasn't long before his senses weren't able to pick up on a single demonic presence.
'What are these creatures? They eliminated, potentially, an entire city of demons in nothing but a few short minutes!' he thought, before he was forced off his vantage point by another shadow monster attacking him from above.
As he fell through the air he was able to twist his body in such a fashion as to land gracefully on the ground. He surveyed the area as the shadows converged on his location, surrounding him completely. The Yellow Flash of Konoha knew the numbers weren't in his favour, but that was never an issue for him back in the day and he would be damned to let circumstances change now.
Moments later a tall handsome black-haired youth landed on the ground in front of Minato. He wore a brown jacket and a black shirt underneath with dark jeans and shoes on. He was flanked by a tall, dark knight with a red accessory on its helmet fluttering in the dry wind, and an even taller, bulker knight carrying a shield the height of Minato and a massive axe.
"You don't look like a demon to me," the black-haired youth stated as matter of fact. His apathetic gray eyes shifted to the similar glowing blue hue of the shadows surrounding them.
"Can't say that I am," Minato replied smoothly, his body tense and ready to strike at a moment's notice.
"Who are you?" the youth questioned.
"I'm Minato Namikaze, but that probably doesn't mean anything to you."
"You're right," he agreed easily. The shadows surrounding both of them quickly pulled in towards the youth, leaving only the two knights standing next to him, as the rest nestled within his shadow.
'His summons then...' the blonde concluded, 'To be able to control that many at the same time... This man is clearly not to be underestimated.' Not that he planned on doing so.
"Who are you?" This time it was Minato that wanted to know the identity of the youth.
"Sung Jin Woo."
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After first obtaining the Demon Castle's dungeon key, Jin woo was afraid that this place would be an S-rank dungeon, after a series of boring and one-sided battles progressing through each floor his anxiety started to disappear. This was the 48th floor and nothing interesting had happened, his tactic of barraging the floor with his shadow army had not been circumvented by any demon up until this point and it was starting to unnerve him about how smoothly this was going.
'Maybe higher floors will get exponentially more difficult, but when will that be?' he wondered. Seeing the light finally appear in the distance meant that one of his shadow generals had obtained the floor key to progress to floor 49.
Igris swiftly and silently trailed behind him after handing over the item he needed to progress further.
He would grow stronger. There were threats outside this dungeon that needed a strong Sung Jin woo.
...
"Alright, Tank, it's your unit this time," he said simply, and the enormous, shadow ice bear leader roared calling forth his fellow bears together. The bears then charged forth into the light towards the next floor followed closely behind by the rest of his shadow army. Leaving him to trail at the back at his own leisurely pace.
Atop the massive tower, he surveyed the decimated city below and watched his shadows get to work easily eliminating every demon in sight and it took only minutes before everything was over.
How boring.
However, he was confused when a notification from the system didn't appear telling him that he'd gained a floor key to pass on to the 50th floor. 'Oh, hello?' he thought, only now sensing the blonde-haired demon sticking to a window opposite the tower he stood on. 'It masks its presence well. If I didn't have my perception stat up so high I probably wouldn't have noticed him until it was too late,' he complimented the demon on its impressive stealth capabilities.
"Igris," he called out and the knight spawned silently from his shadow. His long black cape fluttering in the wind, "Take care of it," he pointed towards the demon with sun-kissed blonde hair ahead of them. The knight nodded springing forth into action and crossing a massive distance in seconds before striking at the demon. He saw the demon fall through the air with no visible damage from Igris's attack. "This might be interesting..." he figured, moving to meet the demon face to face, it was probably the one with the floor key.
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"Sung Jin Woo," he replied to Minato's inquiry. He was having serious doubts that the spiky haired blonde was a demon, but he needed to progress further and he was the only one left on this floor.
"Are you human?" he asked the blonde. Minato only raised a brow at this as if to say, 'what kind of question is that?'
"Yes, I am. I'm not quite sure how I even got here? I remember... dying," Minato replied as a slightly disturbed expression graced his, ultimately, expressionless face.
"Is this hell?" He asked him. Jin woo kept his expression neutral, "Of sorts," he had to admit to himself after spending a significant amount of time here, this would be the image he'd conjure up whenever someone would ask him to imagine what hell would look and be like.
"You say you don't remember how you got here? And you remember dying before arriving here? You also claim to be human and not demon. Do you perhaps, by any chance, hear voices in your head?" Jin Woo asked very carefully, producing a confused expression from Minato. He imagined the blonde was wondering where he was going with these questions.
"Just my own thoughts. I can't say that they're anything more than that," Minato shook his head. His answer only manufactured a frown on Jin Woo's face, he was hoping to get an inkling of what were the mysteries of the system through the blonde.
Alas, things didn't always go his way. He'll just have to progress further for more answers. Speaking of which...
"Do you have the floor key?" he questioned. "Floor key?" Minato murmured, which again left him imagining what blonde was thinking about him with all these unfamiliar questions being thrown at him. "One of these," Jin Woo pulled out an old wrinkled piece of paper with strange writing on it, "They're keys to progress to the next floor."
"Can't say that I have, but one of my kunai is inscribed with similar strange writing to the one on that paper," Minato said, pulling out the three pronged kunai from his shinobi pouch. He held the knife up to show Jin Woo.
"That looks like it... Will you hand it over willing?" He asked, an edge to his tone, but with no change to his blank expression.
"I will, but I just have two questions before I do."
"Which are?" Jin Woo asked curiously.
"You seem to have a lot of knowledge of this place, care to share that with little ole me?" Minato said to which he nodded. He had no problem relinquishing that information. "I'm not too sure about this place myself... All I know is that this world is called the Demons Castle. It's a world with 100 different and separate dimensions or floors, if you will. You can progress through each floor with one of those 'floor keys' but they are guarded by high level demons on each floor, so you'll have to kill them or pry the key off their hands to obtain one. And only someone wielding the key may pass through to the next floor"
"Interesting... My second question is, am I able to leave this Demon Castle. I imagine you don't originate from this world, do you?"
Jin woo pondered the question for a moment, wondering what he would do with such information. It was difficult to read his intentions with that cool expression of his.
Jin Woo didn't know this person, he was a human in the demon world. For what reason he would never know, but that was exactly why he couldn't give him the knowledge of leaving this place. The blonde was clearly very sharp to be able to deduce that he didn't belong here. He'll just give him the runaround.
"Sure... There is a way, but it requires a hearthstone," he showed him the shiny green rock before storing it back in his inventory, "The problem is I've only ever managed to obtain one by luck and only one person can use it at a time. I'm sure you can imagine why I'd be reluctant to just hand it over," he finished, lying out of his teeth knowing that he didn't really need the stone since he had the key to the dungeon and even if he did need it, only he could use the items of the system.
But Minato didn't need to know that.
"Does that satisfy you?" he questioned. Minato didn't answer and instead opted to just toss him the weird knife. In the distance a beam of light shot through to the heavens, showing Jin Woo the path forward. He would have thanked Minato in any other instance for how cooperative he was being, but something about the blonde's attitude was seriously bugging him.
"Yes, it did," he replied simply.
"I don't have much use for it anyway and fighting to keep something I don't need is just irrational," Minato continued, unknowingly, cutting off the question he was about to ask. Right on the tip of his tongue. "You have a skeptical mind, Sung Jin Woo, the attributes of a top-level shinobi. I like that." That was the last thing the blonde said before flickering off into the distance.
Jin woo was just left in the silence of winds blowing and fire raging all around him with just a lingering feeling that that wouldn't be the last he saw of Minato Namikaze.
"Tank."
The leader of the ice bears didn't need any further prompting before appearing underneath Jin Woo and swooping him off his feet onto its back.
"Go forth!" he commanded, as Tank charged forward into the light of the 50th floor.
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"As expected of a boss-grade demon. The drops are excellent," Jin Woo stated, standing in front of a gigantic demon that massively dwarfed him in size. Its body was cut open by the collarbone, leaving it nothing but a corpse.
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[You obtained!
Item: Demon Monarch's Earring]
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[You obtained!
Item: Orb of Avarice]
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[You obtained!
Item: Vulcan's horn x2]
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[You obtained!
Ingredient Item: World Tree's Fragment]
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[Ingredient Item: World Tree's Fragment
Item Class:??
Item Type: Ingredient
Description -
A piece of 'Vulcan's Club' created from a fragment of the World Tree. Wood from this tree contains powerful magic and can be used as an ingredient for the highest quality magic items.]
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"An item ingredient for the highest quality magic items... I can't throw it away without knowing what I can use it for. I'll find use for it someday," he murmured to himself reading through the eye catching description of the tree bark in his hands.
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[Item: Demon Monarch's Earring
Item Class: S
Item Type: Accessory
+20 Strength, +20 Vitality
Set effect will activate if this item is equipped with:
Demon Monarch's Necklace
Demon Monarch's Ring
Set Effect 1 (Locked)
Set Effect 2 (Locked).]
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"An item with a set effect, huh? Will I find the rest of these items if I continue to hunt demons? Guess, I'll find out soon." he said, putting on a strange earring that wouldn't be visible to even himself let alone anyone else. He then picked up the strange orange orb.
"This item has an amazing effect... If I had mage-type skills I would have wanted it for myself," he muttered to himself as he read through its description. "It can double magic power..."
His train of thought was then put to a halt when Igris suddenly appeared, kneeling with a pile of demon heads in front him. Jin Woo was confused by his knight's actions until he finally got what he was doing, but...
"Can you not do that? Because of you... He's doing the same thing," he sweatdropped, pointing out Iron dragging around Vulcan's giant head. He was the one who killed the demon, "But since you lent me your shield, let's say you helped."
'Wait!' If Iron was able to lend him his shield then didn't that mean he could do the same with his soldiers by lending them his own items to use. It was worth a shot.
"Magic unit! Stop paying attention to weird things and get over here," he beckoned the three main mages of his shadow army to his side, as they stopped giving Iron this strange admiration.
"Here," he handed over the Orb of Avarice, pointing to a group of buildings in the distance, "Fire!" he ordered them.
The mages then created a fireball double the size of anything he'd seen them produce up until this point and then fired it off towards those distant buildings, turning them to nothing but ash.
The mage handed the orb back to him and he couldn't help the shocked expression from slipping onto his face.
"Incredible..." he muttered.
As he was dazed by the power of his item, he never felt the tap of his shoulder until the words of the person next to him spilled forth from his mouth.
"Yeah, your summons truly do possess awesome powers," Minato Namikaze murmured in agreement to Jin Woo's previous statement.
The Shadow Lord widened his eyes in alarm not expecting him to suddenly be right beside him. It panicked him so much he summoned his dagger out nowhere and swung full force at the blonde's head.
Minato jumped back to avoid the blow.
"Minato, you bastard!" he growled in anger. The white caped man just held his arms up to surrender, but he wasn't having any of that. It's been a long time since he'd been caught unawares like this and he didn't like that one bit, so he wouldn't give the blonde an inch of ground to step on.
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[Skill: Dominator's Touch activated]
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He stretched his arm out to hold Minato in place with his telekinesis ability, squeezing the life out of him. The rest of his shadows quickly dropped in to engage the blonde, but he suddenly disappeared.
'Where did he-' Jin woo thought before he was smacked on the chin with a flying knee. He felt Minato stomp on his shoulders and kick off of his body into the air and send him tumbling back.
"Calm down, I don't want to fight you, Sung Jin Woo," Minato said, trying to defuse the rising tensions between them. However, he was cut short and forced to avoid a slashing attack from Igris, and then flipped to avoid Iron coming in from his blind spot.
'He's used to fighting multiple opponents at the same time,' Jin woo concluded just from witnessing the brief exchange between him and his top two shadows.
Tank suddenly came barreling in out of nowhere and smashed the ground like a cannonball, leveling the platform they all stood on to nothing. 'Tch! Tank is being too exuberant!' Jin Woo gritted his teeth as he landed on the ground relatively unscathed from Tank's dive bomb attack. And this was the same for Minato.
He glared daggers at the spiky haired blonde, summoning forth both his trusted knight killer blades.
"We can still talk this out, I'm honestly open to just talking," Minato reiterated. "Explain to me why you're here so suddenly. You caught me off guard and I don't like that," the Shadow Lord's tone was deadly.
'He disappeared again... What?' he thought when Minato disappeared in a puff of smoke with his presence being completely undetectable to his perception.
He wondered where the blonde would appear next but for the longest time nothing happened. 'Where did he go?' he wondered, vowing to never let his guard down again in this place.
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"He's dangerous..."
Minato muttered to himself as the memories of his shadow clone flooded his mind. Sung Jin Woo was as tough as steel, had powerful restriction jutsu, able to summon his weapons out of thin air at a moment's notice, and any one of his summons could kill him in one strike.
'It's a good thing my clone was able to mark him directly,' he thought that relying on the sealing formula he had planted on the floor key wouldn't be effective in the long run, because Jin woo could just discard it after he didn't need to use it anymore.
He stood up from the ledge of the high-rise building he sat on. Gazing at the empty, blazing city below. No matter how much he tried he couldn't help but see the image of his own decimated village, one that was destroyed by the very tailed beast sealed inside of him. He didn't like thinking about what he had to do, what he had to give up for the sake of his village. It was a necessary sacrifice to maintain balance and protect the village. He just had to have faith in his son that he would grow strong enough to face that masked fellow in the future.
He came upon the light that Sung had passed through quite a while ago and wondered if he could pass through himself. He wasn't too sure because of his experience beforehand that left to burned for trying to leave the dimension. However when his hand passed through the golden light he knew that was no longer the case.
'What? Why can I go through now?'
Suddenly the memory of the floor key came to mind. Was that thing keeping him bound to this plain? It certainly held a lot of weight but it still begged the question as to why Sung was able to go through with the floor key and not himself even though he had it.
He came upon the new dimension and saw the devastation of a climactic battle that took place, likely Sung being the cause if the little glimpses that his clone was able to spy before Sung struck out against it were anything to go by.
His cape fluttered in the hot wind when came upon the comically large corpse of a demon slumped against a building with its collarbone cut out. He didn't know what to think other than that he was very impressed and maybe even a slightly bit nervous.
"Making an enemy of him isn't a good idea…"
"No. It isn't."
He heard the chilling voice of Sung behind him as he appeared from thin air and held a dagger against his throat. Minato remained deadly still as the young man increased the pressure on his knife enough to break the skin of his throat. He'd never been caught so off guard before.
"Sung Jin Woo, I just want to-"
He was interrupted quickly by the dark summoner though.
"How does it feel to be caught out of your wits?" his smooth voice bellowed behind him, a malicious edge to his tone.
"I wouldn't call it comforting…"
The air from his laugh brushed against his ear which sent another chill down his spine. "I suppose not," he agreed. "Although I remember feeling the same way not so long ago." His tone was purposefully whimsical, he could tell.
"I didn't like it."
Minato discreetly weaved a one handed sign that allowed him to teleport from Jin woo's grasp and gain significant distance between them. It was a good thing that he placed a marker on that building, a healthy habit he'd developed during the Third war.
"Teleportation… It makes sense now. Those movements were way too unnatural to be ordinary movements." Sung astutely deducted.
"You catch on quick." he complimented honestly. His eyes were hard as he put on the mask of the 4th hokage to quickly decrease the rising tension between them.
"I don't want to fight you, Sung Jin Woo."
"Then what do you want?" he questioned sharply.
"I want some good sleep on a bed. I want an escape from this hell hole and I know that you're my ticket out." he explained.
Sung Jin Woo's face became unreadable to him. "What makes you so sure of that?" he raised a brow.
"The hearthstone. If you have that then it means you aren't from this dimension as you alluded to earlier."
The young man just rolled his eyes, letting out a wordless breath and turning his back to him. The intent from earlier completely leaving his body. "Even I can tell you're not from here but I can't just let you leave this place. Not unless I have a show of good faith in helping you." he said.
Minato narrowed his eyes trying to think of what he had to offer that would be considered good faith to him. He didn't have anything with him, no weapons , no funds, no power, nothing. However, he had a feeling that Sung wasn't hinting at any of those things. What he wanted, Minato had figured out, was trust.
And trust was something Minato could afford for now.
"On your left shoulder there's a sealing formula, my sealing formula. I use it to transcend space and distance to always reach a target." he explained.
He saw Jin woo stretch his clothing to reveal tattooed kanji on his shoulder and he didn't give anything away to his thoughts other than a non-plussed shrug.
"This is how you teleport. Interesting." he turned back to him. "You can take it off right?" he questioned.
"I can."
He beckoned him forward with a nod as if to tell him to do it. He heeded the command, feeling as though he was walking closer and closer to death with each step but his unease didn't show. He hovered his palm over the formula before pressing down and removing it.
He then saw Jin woo release a smooth smirk from his face with his mood significantly improved. He grabbed at the air as his kunai appeared from thin into Jin woo's palm.
"Here, take this back." he tossed the floor key. "I'm not going to be heading back so soon so if you can keep up then you can join me in the real world." he said, bursting into the direction of golden light in the distance.
Minato blinked in surprise and scrambled to catch up and easily did so, "That wasn't very cordial of you," he joked.
"You caught up pretty fast. Colour me surprised."
"I have more tricks up my sleeve."
"Let's hope so, things could get serious very soon," he answered but didn't seem overly concerned or worried. There was an assuredness in his strength that reminded him of himself in many ways. He felt that he could trust that strength.
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Just thought I should put all this into a kind of one shot chapter and lmk what y'all think about it. I was just gonna make a completely different story but I decided against that and instead just edited this existing one.
I also wanted Minato and Jinwoo to fight in the original draft but decided against it. I wanted to show that Jin woo knew he had the upper hand on Minato and highlight his smooth talking nature. Cuz low-key I hc Sung as a good negotiator and kinda likes gambling even with all that power (not that type of gambling, yk what I mean!)
Anyways hope you enjoyed and let me know if you want this story to continue and I'll think about it.