Urban Plundering: I Corrupted The System!-Chapter 381: Seed of Sin

To the outside world, it was chaos—but barely.

A few freakouts.

A few street fights.

An unusually heavy fog over Yeouido.

A handful of people losing their shit on camera. One or two viral clips. Enough to stir conversation. Not enough to stir gods. That was exactly how Daegon wanted it.

He didn't want attention.

Not yet.

If he'd wanted to bring the city to its knees, he could've done it with a whisper. He could've melted the skyline into bone, turned every living soul into a shrine of screaming. But destruction was too quick. It attracted the wrong eyes. The wrong reactions. No, Daegon's goal wasn't to drown the city in sin overnight.

It was to feed.

Slowly. Silently.

Corruption, true corruption, didn't shout. It breathed.

Let the humans think it was just a few madmen. A ripple in the stress-ridden current of the modern world. Maybe blame it on some new drug, or collective hysteria. The surface must stay undisturbed. Below that? He would build an empire from broken dreams.

The snow kept falling, thin now, lighter—just a memory on the skin.

And down below, the seeds were blooming.

He spotted her again—the mother with the child. The one who had smiled so purely before. The child tugged at her sleeve, pointing at another boy across the plaza. A richer boy. A cleaner coat. A newer toy. Something sleek, expensive, the kind of luxury ad kids couldn't name but always knew was better.

The rich boy's mother handed it over with ease.

And something flickered in the eyes of the first woman.

She didn't say a word. But her heart stung. Something inside her clenched—not with rage, not even with envy.

With resolution.

She knelt beside her son, eyes locked on that other boy, and whispered, "I'm going to work so hard, baby. I'll get you that. I swear."

It sounded like love.

It looked like a promise.

But inside her chest, a seed glowed faintly, invisible to the human eye—a pulsing ember nestled in her heart like a second beat.

And Daegon felt it.

He didn't need her to kill.

He didn't need her to steal.

He just needed her to chase that feeling.

To Dream it.

To overwork.

To compare.

To bleed for an image.

To compromise—just once. Then once more.

He needed her to feed the seed.

Because the more she sacrificed for that distant, glittering promise—the more of herself she gave up—the stronger the seed became. And it wouldn't whisper evil. It would whisper ambition. Just enough to blur lines. Just enough to make her justify the next step. And the next.

She would never know the moment she was lost.

But Daegon would.

He smiled, watching her carry her son down the street, eyes distant, fire already building behind them. A flame that didn't burn outward—it burned inward, lighting up the hollow places people called "goals" and "motivation" and "being a good parent."

One seed.

Fed.

Multiplied.

He turned his gaze outward now, across the city. And the city stared back, oblivious.

There were millions like her.

Millions pushing through traffic, through bills, through failed marriages, through sleepless ambition and clenching pride. Men swallowing resentment with their morning coffee. Women glancing sideways at people who seemed to have more, smiling while thinking, I should've had that life.

Every silent compromise. Every clench of the jaw. Every whisper of "I deserve more."

He could feed from all of it.

And if he could corrupt even half of Korea?

He could reshape the world.

The Dark Pantheon thought they were planting followers. Soldiers. But Daegon didn't want soldiers.

He wanted farms.

Farms of sin, blooming in glass offices and small apartments and hidden thoughts. A harvest so large even the gods wouldn't know how deep the roots had grown until it was far, far too late. freёnovelkiss.com

He breathed in. Slowly. Deeply.

The city pulsed with sin, but it wasn't enough.

Daegon stood at the tower's edge, the corrupted pearl still glowing in his hand. It was alive, yes—hungry and pulsing with the emotions of the humans it had touched—but it wasn't enough. He could feel its limits. A few thousand, maybe tens of thousands more… and it would splinter. It wasn't built for scale. Not this kind of scale.

But some pearls were.

And he knew exactly who had them.

His eyes slid sideways, past the glowing horizon, past the maze of rooftops where shadows stirred. He could feel them before he saw them—two presences masked behind layered enchantments and magic older than the city's foundation. But they weren't hiding from the humans. They were hiding from him.

Daegon smiled.

Then vanished.

One moment the air was calm, humming softly with the thrum of distant sirens and city breath.

The next—he was behind them.

The two agents of the Dark Pantheon flinched instinctively, spinning around as Daegon landed without sound, coat settling behind him like it had been stitched from midnight itself. He said nothing. Just walked forward, slow and deliberate, that smile never leaving his face.

They knew that smile. They'd heard stories about it.

In the past, when gods vanished from the divine charts, when mountains went silent for centuries, when entire pantheons lost pieces of themselves in Korea's oldest jungles—it was that smile that always came first.

The woman stepped back, her instincts kicking in first. Her eyes narrowed, fingers twitching, preparing to activate the emergency sigil embedded in her palm—an anchor of protection, a recall tether, a signal to her superiors.

But Daegon snorted.

It wasn't even a real sound—more like the amused breath of something ancient.

Then the pressure dropped.

Everything slammed down on them.

The weight was invisible but relentless, like the very gravity of the world had decided they were no longer necessary. Their knees buckled instantly. The man hit the rooftop with a grunt, his face scraping against the concrete. The woman collapsed beside him, choking on air that now felt thick and burning in her lungs. Their veins bulged under their skin, black and blue and red all fighting for space as their bodies trembled beneath the crushing energy.

Their eyes bulged, wide, panicked. They were agents of the Dark Pantheon. They did not kneel. They did not break. But Daegon wasn't something they were trained to resist. He wasn't just corrupted power. He was divine memory weaponized by wrath.

The man gasped, blood edging his lips. "You… y-you're making a mistake... going against the Pantheon... this isn't wise—"