Chapter 203
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 203
Chapter Title: The Ghost in the Void
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Thud, thud.
She walked through the desert.
When her throat was parched, she drank from puddles in the sand.
When her stomach growled, she peeled bark from trees to eat.
But even that had its limits in the desert.
Her legs gave out, and she slumped beneath a withered tree.
She was a being that no longer existed in the world.
She had given away her name, the sword she had honed for so long.
She had discarded everything of her own volition.
The reason was childish, in a way.
‘Even if I don’t struggle to save the world, someone else will.’
She had always shouldered some burden.
Some called it the greater good.
She had borne the greater good of the Chinese people, cutting down her brother and his wife, then slaying her father and senior brothers from the sect who came to assassinate her for her young nephew.
Assassination, murder, arson, massacre.
It wasn’t as if she were strange.
Everywhere, the people were killing their own people.
Monsters burst from hundreds of dungeons, and the gifted and their patrons slew them to seize power.
The system teetered on collapse, warlords and minority ethnic groups rising across China’s lands.
They burned neighbors alive yesterday, bayoneted family members over differing thoughts, all to boast their revolutionary ideals.
The madness of ruin swept the homeland.
There was nothing left to shoulder, no reason left to swing her sword.
‘Why did I do such things?’
The weight of all she had killed and burned crushed her shoulders.
She turned her gaze to the dungeon.
The clear enemy of humanity—she had challenged Shanghai’s colossal dungeon, the Infinite Labyrinth, believing her sword held meaning there.
Before long, she was called Shanghai’s Demon Sword.
……
When she was dragged to Babel, her heart felt lighter instead.
It was as if she had lived solely to fight here.
For every giant foe she felled, she saved the world that much.
‘Teacher Liang, take a break.’
‘Liang Xian! Show us another feat in today’s hunt!’
Each thanks from comrades and citizens brought new feelings.
Fulfillment.
With every desperate battle, she saved one more person, step by step.
‘It’s grueling and harsh.’
But the burden she carried held meaning.
She thought so.
The blood buried in her past might have been for this very moment.
……
It was an illusion.
Arrogant delusion, as if she mattered.
A monster appeared, identical to her, like a mirror.
The monster from the future, ‘R,’ said:
I died on a mere 39th floor.
And Ju Gonghyeok, disciple of your father, saves the world.
……
My struggles meant nothing.
Even without me, someone saves the world.
The sense of saving the world with every monster slain was an illusion.
Someone else would have killed them anyway.
Then.
‘Why am I fighting?’
The world’s salvation is already destined.
There is nothing I can shoulder.
‘How wretched.’
She realized why her incarnation was one of the Four Evils.
‘My life stained in blood. Utterly meaningless.’
Her lips twisted in a vile sneer without her knowing.
She burned people, killed family.
She shut her ears to pleas for mercy in the name of the nation’s will.
She drove her sword—passed down through generations—into her father’s guts as he cursed her filial impiety.
Thoughts always came too late.
When bullets flew, she slashed reflexively.
When she deemed it wrong, she turned her blade on the other side.
She couldn’t tell what was right.
It was packaged as justice and righteousness.
When she came to, corpses of rebels and government troops piled like mountains.
Then she fled to Babel.
She felt relief.
“Kekekek.”
Laughter was inevitable.
Filial impiety, subhuman scum.
To seek meaning in such acts.
“What a wicked bitch you are, Liang Xian.”
Having abandoned her country, her family.
She finally abandoned herself.
……
Long ago, her father—whom she killed—had said:
‘Empty a human of humanity, and a god remains in its place.’
Grrrr—
As she meditated beneath the tree, some monster seized her ankle.
The Blighted Ent.
The cursed deadwood lifted her to prepare her death.
Her hand went unconsciously to her waist.
Where her sword had always hung.
‘Ah.’
Of course, no sword was there.
She had given it to the monster from the future.
No sword could be there.
The colossal tree giant gripped her ankle and whipped her toward the ground like a lash.
Boom!
Smashed defenseless into the earth, her arm joints twisted backward.
Her organs ruptured from the impact. Blood gushed from esophagus and nose, eye vessels burst, one eye staining red.
Kiiii……
The Blighted Ent’s roots and branches intertwined into a blunt mace.
The mace rose high to crush her head.
“……Ugh.”
The shock left her mind hazy.
The round mace resembled a human face.
‘Don’t burn our house!’
‘Advisor Liang! I truly didn’t commit treason…’
‘Must be nice having four incarnations. So many ways to die without getting bored.’
‘Spare me, Xian. I opposed Master!’
‘Crazy bitch! Because you turned, the party’s last stronghold…’
Faces of those she had killed flashed by.
The final overlapping face was Liang Xian.
Her past self.
‘Die.’
Her austere, pure past self distorted her face viciously.
‘Please die.’
The mace fell to shatter the nameless woman’s forehead.
“Ah…….”
In that fleeting instant. She.
Wanted to claw off every loathsome mug before her eyes.
Her face was drenched in blood.
Kieeeek!
The Blighted Ent swinging the mace shrieked, severed branches flying.
What stained her face was not red blood, but the Ent’s sticky sap.
She suddenly realized she gripped something.
Pulled unconsciously from her waist, it transmitted a clear sensation to her hand.
‘The feel of a “sword hilt”?’
The hilt was as familiar and comfortable as if she were born clutching it.
It fit her hand perfectly, no gaps, no discomfort no matter how hard she gripped.
Her vision caught what she held.
A black line writhed like something alive.
It wasn’t merely held. It was some “thing” beyond describing as a sword.
A single glance away, and she’d be sucked into the slender black line.
Kiek! Kieeek!
“Shut up.”
The black line twisted grotesquely, burrowing into the Blighted Ent’s body.
Shards and sap splattered greedily, then silence fell.
Staring blankly, she looked at her hand.
No sword was there.
Yet.
She felt the hilt.
Through the impossible hilt, the sensation of the slash reverberated.
“Kick.”
She tore into the Ent’s bark and ate.
Breaking branches for a splint, she thudded onward through the desert once more.
Her steps held no prior emptiness.
Instead, a bizarre zeal filled them.
Into her hollow void, a “god” had entered.
No. Not entered—remained.
The ghost that burned people alive.
The friend always in her secret depths.
Emptied of humanity.
Only the ghost remained.
* * *
Kim Jintae’s eyes snapped open to sudden stimulation.
Blinding lights and grand orchestra filled the hall.
He stood in the Company City’s banquet hall.
‘Celebrating victory on the 43rd floor!’
‘Cheers to the heroes who cleansed the disgrace brought by Ju Gonghyeok!’
The celebration’s din deafened him.
Kim Jintae felt his vision narrowed.
A mask covered the edges of his face.
‘Suffocating.’
Kim Jintae raised a hand to remove the mask.
But the hand grabbed the mic instead.
His lips uttered bizarre words he’d never dreamed of.
“Next up is Expedition Vice-Leader Kim Jintae, honored for his feats on the 43rd floor. Give him a round of applause.”
‘Me’ called ‘me.’
A cheerful, grinning man ascended the podium.
‘Me.’
He handed ‘me’ the mic.
“Ayy~ I didn’t do much~ Whoa! Seonhwa, bro’s right here!”
‘He’ bantered from the podium in greeting.
His sister in a dress, Seonhwa, laughed and clapped.
A bizarre harmony.
I am Kim Jintae.
Yet Kim Jintae stands there.
An identical ‘me’ beside me.
And his sister claps for him.
‘Bear with the discomfort a moment.’
A voice echoed in his head.
Another consciousness moved his hand, spoke at will.
Only then did Kim Jintae shake off the haze.
‘Me’ was not ‘Kim Jintae.’
A copy. Kim Jintae’s shadow born on the 20th floor.
The real Kim Jintae locked eyes with the masked ‘me.’
“Uhahat, it’s all thanks to Expedition Leader Alphard who picked me, right?”
The masked me—Alphard—held the mic.
“A Kirin Child title doesn’t come just from my selection. Take pride in it.”
“Haha. You sure know how to hype the leader.”
Kim Jintae scratched his head bashfully.
Kirin Child Kim Jintae.
A promising second-gen hunter rising amid eyes, not first-gen like Christina or Ymir.
A man who wouldn’t betray the cheers of many or his sister’s expectations.
‘I was a far finer man than I thought.’
The fake Kim Jintae, robbed even of body, sank beneath consciousness.
* * *
The usual Kim Jintae drifted dreamlike, but his awareness sharpened at times.
Like a ghost, he watched everything behind Alphard.
Cornering Ju Gonghyeok, talking with enigmatic comrades, adored as Company’s next chair.
Periodically entering a metal capsule.
Strapping on the ‘shoooo—’ oxygen breather in viscous, suffocating fluid felt like some SF comic geezer on life support—creepy.
‘Should’ve negotiated terms when handing over my body.’
Liang Xian’s clone, R, implanted the Alpha factor.
It ignited, and the future’s ‘Alphard’ seized his body.
Kim Jintae had never intended to yield his body.
Rooted in trait 「Vessel of the Great Hero」, his sturdy ego resisted crude mind control.
So Ju Gonghyeok broke his optimistic spirit.
To corner him, use his words, manipulate as needed.
But it was a blunder.
The day Kim Jintae’s heart broke, denied his own existence.
Alphard captured him in one fell swoop.
Kim Jintae addressed Alphard.
‘Targeting me from the start?’
A reply came from across the unconscious.
‘No. You were one candidate. Circumstances led here; others were possible.’
Alphard pulled figures from his memories.
‘Soma Sangai, Ha Yeonsi, Christina C Mahadeva, Edgar Andrews, Ymir, Omer Ashk…’
‘Out of all those, I got picked by chance.’
‘No coincidence. Your potential was highly rated. Even in death, future records noted 「Vessel of the Great Hero」 carefully.’
At “death,” Kim Jintae freaked.
‘Death? What, I die midway?’
‘Not in our envisioned future.’
‘Then what happens to me? Pushed out by you? Or freed someday?’
‘Fear not.’
Alphard replied bureaucratically yet kindly.
‘When Ju Gonghyeok dies, I’ll release you. Endure just until then.’
‘…….’
Kim Jintae sighed inwardly.
In despair, he hadn’t cared about his body, but semi-forced into this mental prison changed his mind.
‘Wanna get out, eat good food, greet friends, see my sister.’
‘I’ll accommodate as much as possible.’
Alphard replied courteously.
‘This capsule too. Six hours a day—boring as hell. Usually feels like watching a movie from behind, but inside…’
Whirr—
Alphard opened the capsule and rose.
Copy Kim Jintae’s consciousness drifted back to dreamstate.
“Do this, or you’ll regret it later.”
Erasing the words from Kim Jintae’s awareness, he donned clothes.
Opening the door, ‘Z’ awaited at the table.
Alphard gave a light greeting.
“Rare to meet face-to-face. Zarathustra.”
“How’s the body?”
Z asked curtly; Alphard rolled his shoulders.
“Fine for years ahead.”
“Good.”
Alphard pulled a chair, sitting opposite.
“More than that—no private ‘comm’ either. Why request a secret meet without other comrades?”
“……Something to say.”
“What?”
Tap, tap, tap.
Z drummed the desk heavily, as if hard to voice.
“Alphard. Thoughts on the Necromancer King from the 43rd?”
“Necromancer King? Not hard. He’s a genius.”
Alphard asserted without hesitation.
“He grasps battlefields beyond battlefields, achieving goals unbound by power or place. Few could comprehend his thought process or mission-solving—count on one hand.”
Alphard recalled 43rd floor memories.
Planet Hetrae.
Others scrambled to clear foes on the ground; the Necromancer King expanded to the planet beyond.
‘Don’t know the means, but summoning the satellite machine god was him, no doubt.’
Not coincidence possessing it.
He targeted the ‘planet’ backdrop.
‘Even if a mega-deus class machine god, same terrestrial combat type wouldn’t yield this effect.’
When the Necromancer King hurled beastkin to space, Alphard was certain.
Only he used the mission’s space field.
‘Capability aside. Normal humans don’t think or imagine that far.’
Familiarity from repeats might allow it.
Unfathomable to Alphard.
“So, he’s a genius.”
“Is that so.”
Z halted his drumming.
“Then, Alphard. Thoughts on our foe, Ju Gonghyeok?”
“Ju Gonghyeok?”
Alphard pondered, not answering easily.
Necromancer King or Ju Gonghyeok—Alphard could voice his thoughts freely.
The issue was questioner ‘Z’s intent.
“Zarathustra. Testing me?”
Alphard fixed sunken eyes on Z.
“Say what you mean straight, no circling. Zarathustra.”
“Understood.”
Z slowly closed his eyes.
“Our foe Ju Gonghyeok and history’s hero Necromancer King are…….”
“Ju Gonghyeok and Necromancer King?”
“Likely the same person.”
‘Z’ was first in Babel to suspect Necromancer King and Ju Gonghyeok identical.
Only some angels and demons knew.
Moreover, Necromancer King was the sole hero future-folk revered against Ju Gonghyeok.
Another future-man might gape, but Alphard showed little surprise.
He merely nodded quietly.
“I vaguely suspected. We have ample records to infer.”
“Yes. Until now, we thought Ju Gonghyeok framed the Necromancer King, but it grew unnatural.”
“Not entirely without evidence. Especially for me.”
Alphard had Kim Jintae’s memories.
Ju Gonghyeok never outright admitted being Necromancer King to him, but lax from assuming he’d recruit him as subordinate.
Thus, Alphard confirmed now.
“What now?”
Z pressed gravely.
“Our final plan hinged on ‘Necromancer King’ surviving. Even without Ju Gonghyeok, Necromancer King handles the last war. But if Necromancer King is fictional…….”
“Hmm.”
“The plan crumbles.”
Alphard narrowed eyes, stroking chin.
“Troubling.”
“Far more comrades died than expected. With S executed, five survivors. No Necromancer King, we can’t win the final war.”
Alphard asked calmly.
“Without Necromancer King, what variables remain?”
“Insufficient. At best, Hildegard or some angels.”
“Then, Zarathustra. You’re not thinking of sparing Ju Gonghyeok?”
To Alphard’s sharp query, Z replied coldly.
“Alphard. Our plan doesn’t end with killing Ju Gonghyeok.”
Future-men must conquer Babel.
Humanity’s trash—punishing Ju Gonghyeok was mere process.
Z voiced their eternal slogan.
“Our first goal. Kill Ju Gonghyeok, save the world.”
“Hm.”
“Reverse it.”
Scratch, scratch.
Z carved into the table.
‘First goal. Save the world, kill Ju Gonghyeok.’
Alphard and Z nodded in agreement.
“We must prepare for the final war. For that, we need Ju Gonghyeok too.”
“Gather new forces. More promising hunters…….”
Z offered a simple solution.
“Raise the Dragon God.”
“Dragon God?”
“It’s in the records. Use Dragon God to eliminate Ju Gonghyeok or as final war bait.”
“Got it. Tell Kurosh (K) infiltrating beastkin.”
“Then the Four Heavenly Kings’ Heidrich cooperating with us…….”
Z outlined next plans to Alphard.
Fates of Babel-shakers shifted on their few words.
Beep—
‘G’s comm reached their minds.
[This is ‘G’. Company northwest sector 55. Found Great Deathworm.]
The 5th floor transcendent monster ‘Great Deathworm’ vanished days ago.
With the demon archduke-level beast that turned most of vast 5th into wasteland gone, they dispatched G to investigate.
Contact now.
“Deathworm’s disappearance cause?”
[Urgent. Found missing Liang Xian. Extremely dangerous state.]
“Liang Xian there?”
A lead on bolstering forces.
Alphard judged, issuing orders.
“Extract her at full force. Deathworm is special quasi-archduke transcendent—you alone…….”
[No, Alphard. Hurry here and save me.]
Imagery transmitted to Alphard’s mind.
Panting absent from comm came through raw.
[Body bisected. Blood loss and organ leakage critical. Severed parts won’t reattach. Immediate rescue…….]
“Going now.”
Alphard rose hastily, bidding Z farewell.
“Until next time, comrade of the Divine Spear.”
Z was already gone.