Urban Plundering: I Corrupted The System! - Chapter 375

Chapter 375: The Fall of Daegon
There are stories the world forgets on purpose. Not because they are weak, but because they are too dangerous to remember. Before the first king bent his knee to a crown, before even gods erected their temples in the stolen breath of men, there was Earth.

Raw.

Wild.

Endless.

And at the heart of it, breathing smoke and stone in modern day Korea, was Daegon.

A titan.

A dragon born not from the heavens or starlight, but from the molten sigh of the world itself.

He wasn’t created to rule, or to conquer. He simply was—the world’s first and last line of defense, a breathing promise that no god would ever rape the soil or chain the sky without consequence.

Daegon was not a creature of compassion, nor cruelty. He was balance in its purest, ugliest form.

When arrogant spirits tried to carve rivers into cages for their vanity, Daegon shattered their existence and ground their arrogance into dust.

When lesser deities sought to burn forests into their private palaces, he tore their flames apart and swallowed their ashes. For eons uncounted, he judged, executed, and guarded without thanks, without hesitation, without hate. It was simply who he was.

And for a long, long time, the Korea needed no other justice.

Then came the day the sky cracked open with a sound older than memory itself. A comet of light split the clouds, searing a path through the heavens, and crashed into the sacred bones of Mount Taebaek. Daegon rose from his deep cradle beneath the earth, wings heavy with suspicion, prepared to erase whatever invader dared to lay claim to the world’s breath.

But when the dust settled and the mountains stopped screaming, it wasn’t some ravenous tyrant or hollow conqueror he found—it was Hwanung.

Hwanung did not come with blades, nor did he arrive draped in crowns and arrogance. He came with seeds in his palms and dreams burning behind his mortal eyes.

He taught humanity to till the earth without butchering it, to shape flame without devouring forests, to live with the world instead of ripping it apart in the name of greed.

Daegon watched, every ancient bone in his body prepared for betrayal—and for the first time in all the endless churning of time, he found none. Against all expectation, he approved. And deep within his eons old dragon heart, buried so far beneath his roar that even he barely recognized it, he felt a whisper of hope.

But even the greatest guardians bleed where the world forgets to guard them.

And Daegon’s wound wore a name: Seoryeon.

Seoryeon—like a spirit of mists and forgotten dreams, the breath between dawn and death— was the only being Daegon had ever softened for.

Not in the foolish, burning way of mortals, but in the slow, inevitable aching of mountains yearning for rain. For centuries he had admired her from afar—never touching, never demanding, only existing in the desperate, unspeaking hope that someday she might see him. And she had. She had danced among his storms, sang songs against his thunder, tamed his silences with her laughter.

And yet, it was not Daegon that Seoryeon fell for.

It was Hwanung.

Not because she sought cruelty. Not because she wished to wound. Simply because sometimes even the spirits of the oldest worlds are helpless before a dream too fierce, too beautiful, too impossible to ignore—

Love!

The beasts came swiftly after.

At first, they were whispers at the edge of his mind: Envy, a serpent that slithered through his veins and hissed of stolen dreams.

Wrath, a black flame coiling around his ribs, promising justice soaked in blood.

Despair, a crow gnawing at his sight, whispering that all things must end in ash.

Jealousy, a shattered mirror reflecting Seoryeon’s laughter in arms not his own.

Pride, a crown of poisoned gold forged from every silent sacrifice Daegon had ever made without reward and more sins came one after another. They bit him. They gnawed him into pieces so small even the mountains might have wept to see it.

But Daegon did not break.

He tamed them.

He bled and roared and bent the beasts to his will, until their howls became his anthem. They became his armor. His weapons. His proof that he could master even the sins that devoured lesser gods and spirits.

And so it was not madness that drove Daegon down from his sacred peaks the night the world bled.

It was unreciprocated love, and choice to get corrupted instead!

Under a blood-drenched moon, when even the stars had turned their faces away, Daegon descended upon the living world—not as a protector, not as a judge, but as an executioner. Every step shattered the bones of the land.

Forests died screaming.

Rivers boiled into ash and mist.

Half the land that would one day wear the name of Korea was ground beneath his fury. Humanity screamed, gods fled, and hope fled with them.

And standing alone against him, shining and doomed, was Hwanung.

Their battle ripped the sky into tatters. Mountains cracked and wept molten blood. Seas screamed themselves into madness. Time itself buckled under the weight of their fury. Blow for blow, dream against despair, they fought until even memory dared not witness them.

In the end, Daegon struck the killing blow. With a roar that shattered valleys and turned forests into deserts, he tore Hwanung’s godly body apart, scattering it like starlight across the ruined land.

For a moment, Daegon thought he had won. That he had silenced betrayal. That he had carved balance back into a world gone mad.

But Hwanung’s spirit rose from the dust like a phoenix too stubborn to die. His voice, soft as it was, cracked the very bones of the earth.

> “You can break my body, Daegon,” it whispered, “but you cannot chain a dream and as well, you won’t ever be accepted by her, for you’re a corruption now and every bit of warmth she once held for you is gone.”

And Daegon, in that hollow, echoing moment, understood.

He had won nothing. He had lost everything.

Nature itself recoiled from him. The rivers turned their backs. The mountains wept. The forests folded into silence. His own blood—the breath of earth and stone—rejected him as a cursed thing. He was no longer Guardian. No longer Titan. No longer Daegon.

He was exile.

He was corruption.

He was the graveyard where dreams went to rot.

He retreated into the shattered scars of the world, dragging his chained beasts with him, wearing them like broken armor. He was king of nothing, a master of regrets, all sins and poisoned victories.

And yet even corruption has its end.

One day, without roar or flame, a force older than gods themselves found him.

It did not strike.

It did not shout.

It whispered.

And Daegon, breaker of gods, slayer of dreams, master of corruption, fell without a sound.

His dragon heart—once the pulse of mountains, once the fire of the world—shattered into a thousand silent shards, scattered into the veins of forgotten earth.

Some say Daegon is dead.

Some say he sleeps still, waiting for a world worth judging again.

But if he wakes—may the gods themselves tremble.

Because this time, there will be no dream left to save.