Chapter 01
The Unified Empire, the Astar Empire.
A nation that had conquered six kingdoms and finally brought the entire continent under its rule.
Yet now, there was someone who threatened to shake the very order of the continent.
His identity was none other than the Demon King, Belmond.
“There are those who claim that Astar is the rightful master of this continent. But that is nothing more than a delusion. From this day forward, we shall trample upon their arrogance.”
At the sight of Demon King Belmond’s imposing presence, his subordinates wore solemn expressions.
Belmond spoke, exuding a dark aura.
“The continent of Rahman shall be plunged into darkness alongside our army of magical beasts.”
The Demon King, clad in a dark blue cloak, sat upon his throne and looked down at the subordinates gathered around him.
At his side stood his trusted followers, who had once plunged the continent into terror.
And now, with another conquest of the continent imminent, Belmond was about to proclaim his grand ambition.
“Indeed. We shall—”
BOOM!
Suddenly, in the middle of his speech, the ceiling exploded, sending dirt and rubble crashing down.
A moment later, a man slowly emerged from the enormous cloud of dust.
“Haaah. Why do I have to go through all this trouble just to get inside?”
The man, wearing a worn-out coat, brushed the dust off his shoulders with his palms.
He looked nothing like a battlefield hero or a holy warrior.
And yet, this was the Demon King’s castle, surrounded by countless barriers that made it impossible for an ordinary person to infiltrate.
In other words, the mere fact that he had made it inside proved that he was no ordinary man.
“W-Who are you?”
The Demon King’s subordinates instinctively grew wary of the murderous aura emanating from the man.
THUD!
At that moment, Hannibal, one of the Four Heavenly Kings of the Demon King’s army and a man with a lion’s head, strode toward the intruder and opened his mouth.
“Who the hell are you?! You stand before our lord, the great Demon King Belmond! Get on your knees and show him the respect he deserves!”
In response, the man raised his index finger with an oddly serious expression.
“Ahhh, we’re not quite at the stage of showing each other that kind of reverence and respect yet. If anything, we’re more likely to end up at each other’s throats, exchanging all sorts of underhanded schemes and dirty tricks… I’d rather avoid that.”
“What did you say?!”
At Hannibal’s thunderous roar, the Demon King’s army, which had been standing guard in a dignified formation, clapped their hands over their ears in alarm.
Hannibal, one of the Four Heavenly Kings of the Demon King’s army.
He was a hot-tempered tyrant, cruel to an almost excessive degree.
THUD!
Unable to restrain his temper any longer, he raised his enormous halberd and charged ferociously at the stranger.
Even in the face of Hannibal’s overwhelming momentum, the man casually drew his weapon: a pair of twin blades.
Whoosh! Slash, slash!
The moment the blades left their sheaths, multiple slashes swept across Hannibal’s massive body.
Blood sprayed in every direction, accompanied by fragments of shattered armor.
CRASH!
The sound of the giant collapsing echoed across the battlefield.
Drip. Drip.
As Hannibal’s blood and flesh slowly fell to the ground, everyone stared in horror.
Meanwhile, the man responsible for this carnage looked utterly unconcerned.
At that moment, Demon King Belmond narrowed his golden eyes and spoke.
“Who are you? Don’t tell me you’re some kind of hero?”
The man shook the blood remaining on his blades and replied indifferently.
“Couldn’t care less about that crap.”
Belmond furrowed his brows.
“Then what on earth are you doing here?”
The man sighed and rested his swords on his shoulder.
“Ethan Fritz, tax collector of the Astar Empire’s National Taxation Bureau. You built a castle and stationed your troops within the territory of the Astar Empire without authorization, didn’t you? On top of that, you’ve been raising military funds without paying a single coin in taxes.”
Belmond was momentarily speechless.
“…What?”
Ethan shamelessly added another remark.
“So I’ve come to collect your taxes. The total amount due is 210,000 gold coins.”
“…”
A brief silence followed.
“…HAAAAAH! KILL THAT BASTARD RIGHT NOW!”
“WAAAAAAAH!”
At Belmond’s command, the entire Demon King’s army charged toward him in an explosive frenzy.
Approximately three hours later.
The Demon King’s fortress had been reduced to complete ruins.
In the middle of a battlefield covered in blood and debris, Ethan sat on the enormous horn of a fallen Minotaur, checking a sack filled with gold coins.
In front of the shattered throne, Belmond, covered in blood and trembling, asked:
“You… What the hell are you…?!”
Ethan sighed and slowly turned his head.
His eyes were weary, yet cold and sharp.
“Ahhh… Like I told you.”
He sheathed his swords and slowly turned toward Demon King Belmond.
“I’m a tax collector.”
“…”
And so, Demon King Belmond’s plan to conquer the continent came to nothing due to a lack of military funds and complete financial ruin.
What a miserable life it had been.
I’d thought that if I lived diligently like everyone else, something good would eventually come of it.
I’d done my best.
During my school years, I’d squeezed every last bit of intelligence out of my brain to study. At university, I’d buried myself in books, working myself to the bone to keep my scholarship.
They said I needed to build up my résumé, so I participated in all sorts of pointless extracurricular activities. When writing my thesis, I arrived at the research lab before my professor and stayed there, working relentlessly.
And what was the result?
Some well-connected person’s son got the job at a major corporation, and my name was left off the research paper.
Good grades, writing someone else’s paper for them, giving it everything I had—it was all useless.
In this world, connections mattered more than hard work.
Even so, I refused to give up.
I worked all kinds of part-time jobs while preparing for employment, and eventually managed to get hired by a small company.
But even there, I wasn’t treated properly.
My salary was pitiful, and the company took my sacrifices for granted.
After living like that for several years, my body was ruined, and my mind had become exhausted.
And then, the final moment arrived.
“Hey, you there!”
A light emerged from the darkness of the roadside.
Through my closing eyelids, I saw the white headlights. Then came a dull thud as the impact sent my body flying before I tumbled across the ground.
My blood, which should have been warm, slowly grew cold.
My entire body tingled with pain, and my breathing became labored.
[Hey, you.]
“????”
In an instant, everything before my eyes turned white.
A strange voice, sharp enough to pierce my ears, echoed inside my head.
If the devil had a voice, I imagined it would sound something like this.
[Do you want to live?]
“…What?”
[I will give you a chance to start your life over. But there is a condition. If you fail to achieve your objective, your heart will stop beating. And your soul will belong to me.]
I wanted to live. I desperately wanted to live.
Sensing the desperate desire hidden in my heart, the mysterious voice immediately responded.
[Here is a man who lived a tragic life.]
A man appeared before my eyes.
He had red hair. After enduring the contempt of the nobles around him, he eventually met his end, dying after being pierced by a spear.
[His name is Ethan Fritz. He lived as an imperial tax collector until his death. He took pride in his duty as a tax collector, yet in the end, he died without accomplishing anything. You will live his life in his place, but if you fail to fulfill his unfulfilled wish and achieve his objective, your heart will stop beating.]
People said life was hard enough as it was. What was the point of reincarnating if I was just going to suffer all over again?
I couldn’t help feeling a sense of rebellion.
Whether that mysterious voice was a god or a devil, I needed it to make one thing clear.
“It’s not like Ethan has to live as a tax collector, right? I want to live a different life. Fate can be changed, can’t it?”
[Oh?]
The mysterious voice seemed somewhat amused by my audacity, yet it didn’t appear to think I was entirely wrong.
[Then let’s do it this way.]
At that moment, I heard the sound of space tearing somewhere nearby.
Crackle!
This time, a different scene unfolded before my eyes.
A vast underground city. In the darkness that swallowed the night, red lanterns illuminated the territory of thieves.
Beyond the window lay a familiar street. A thieves’ hideout—and the back of a man looking down upon it.
Ethan Fritz.
The very man I’d seen meeting that miserable end moments earlier.
Before becoming a tax collector, Ethan had worked as the master of a thieves’ guild.
And in the very next scene, from the center of the city, a man named Lowfang and several tax collectors were approaching the guild.
[This is Ethan’s past, before he became a tax collector.]
“…So what?”
[This was the only moment when Ethan could make a choice for himself. How about starting over from here?]
I gritted my teeth.
I hated the fact that Ethan was a thief, and I hated the idea of living a life that seemed to unfold according to some predetermined script.
“So, what am I supposed to do?”
[It’s simple. A wager.]
At that moment, a new window appeared before me.
「Quest: Escape from Lowfang!」
– Success: You may choose the life you want.
– Failure: You must become a tax collector and follow Lowfang.
“…The life I want, huh?”
Of course, it was tempting.
Rather than being dragged along by a miserable fate, I would willingly throw myself into a challenge with the intention of winning.
That was the better option.
So I made my decision.
“Fine. I’ll take that bet.”
At that moment, the world turned upside down.
My consciousness was sucked into the void.
And when I opened my eyes, I had become Ethan Fritz.
As I drew in a breath, the scent of the air struck my nose, familiar yet strangely foreign.
‘This body… It’s really Ethan’s.’
I didn’t even need to look in a mirror to know.
The sensations at my fingertips, the sounds reaching my ears, and my own instincts all told me the same thing: this body belonged to Ethan Fritz.
The moment I possessed him, I instinctively absorbed his memories and gained an immediate understanding of his abilities.
‘There’s nothing particularly impressive about this guy!’
I’d been fooled.
His reputation as the master of a thieves’ guild had led me to believe Ethan was exceptionally talented, but he was only slightly better than the average person.
All he could really do was pick locks and move around without making a sound.
That was it.
He had become the master of a thieves’ guild through nothing more than one coincidence after another.
“Master Ethan. Lowfang will be dispatched here tomorrow to collect taxes.”
As if on cue, my secretary informed me of the current situation.
Lowfang.
Even the name sounded suspicious.
It was certain that the man was a tax collector, but he was probably no ordinary one.
After all, escaping from him was the entire point of this quest. That alone said enough.
Still, perhaps the objective wasn’t simply to run away. It seemed more appropriate to say that I had to escape his surveillance network.
Put bluntly, if the guild’s accounts were perfectly in order, he would have no choice but to leave.
“That’s a headache.”
I let out a deep sigh.
Of all the people I could have encountered in this thieves’ guild, I had to deal with someone like him.
But I had no intention of wasting the single day I had left.
I mobilized every informant within the guild.
After gathering information about Lowfang, I discovered that he was someone even the continent’s most notorious merchant companies and nobles went out of their way to avoid.
He wasn’t merely someone who examined documents. He had an extraordinary talent for uncovering concealed wealth.
Wherever he went, hidden funds were seized in their entirety, leaving the merchants and lords who lost their hard-earned money in despair.
In other words, if things continued as they were, there was a good chance our guild’s funds would be confiscated as well.
I examined the guild’s ledgers.
They contained records of various revenue streams and transactions, but no matter how I looked at them, there was no way to fool Lowfang with perfectly ordinary accounting.
He wasn’t someone who merely checked the numbers written on paper. He tracked the actual movement of money.
That meant simple falsification wouldn’t work.
“Then I’ll have to change the flow itself.”
I decided to employ a simple trick while revising specific entries in the ledger to conceal some of our funds.
I distributed the money among several fictitious accounts and recorded some of it as nonexistent funds offset by fabricated debts.
At the same time, I had several guild members borrow small amounts of gold, making it appear as though the guild was burdened by enormous debts.
In other words, on paper, the guild would look as though it were drowning in debt.
“Good. Now, even if he comes, it won’t look like there’s much left to take.”
But that alone wasn’t enough.
If he launched a direct investigation, there was still a risk that he would uncover the concealed funds.
I summoned several of the guild’s subordinates.
“We need to keep Lowfang from getting anywhere near our guild.”
The guild members looked at me tensely. I smiled before adding:
“If he tries to investigate us, deliberately feed him misleading information. Tell him things like, ‘The real money is loaded onto a smuggling ship in the south,’ or ‘It’s hidden in an abandoned warehouse in the west.’”
“Then he’ll waste his time searching the wrong places instead of investigating our headquarters.”
One of my subordinates nodded as he grasped the idea.
“Exactly. We need to make sure he comes up empty-handed. And if he starts investigating the guild, spread enough false information to confuse him. If every guild member tells him a different story, he’ll have no choice but to get confused.”
The subordinates dispersed with determined expressions.
Now, the only question was how quickly Lowfang would reach us.
I looked over the ledger one more time and made a final round of adjustments.
