The Forgotten King's Battle [1]
My entire journey began with the demonic.
Hatred born of the demonic.
Distrust born of the demonic.
A journey that started from the demonic, and at every turning point of my life the demonic had stamped a full stop, driving me to the extreme.
—Creeeak…
I opened my eyes.
Even after opening them I sat for a long while in the quiet of twilight.
I had felt something like this before. As a child, after dozing off in the warm sunlight under a heavy, languid drowsiness and then waking from a deep, sound sleep, I would experience a similar sensation.
Where was I?
What had I been doing before I fell asleep?
Who was I?
None of the memories would connect, and I would sit there blankly for ages.
So I sat for a long time.
Through the open window I felt the cool wind the cooling, red-hot earth breathed out as it settled.
“Have you awakened, my lady?”
“….”
Beside the bed, a maid knelt with perfect formality; I had no idea when she had arrived.
“Princess.”
At those words I blinked my black eyelids.
For a long while I simply stared at the maid in silence.
I saw the broad wooden floor and a vast room so empty it felt hollow.
A great distance lay between the maid and me, and the thin white blanket draped over my body slid down along my pale skin.
Beyond the window a single thread of late-autumn twilight light was faintly visible.
“Is something the matter, Princess?”
The maid whispered with her head still bowed.
I ran my fingers through my black hair.
I picked up the mirror beside the bed.
I held it to my face.
My black eyes looked back at me.
My eyes shouldn’t be this color, I muttered.
The maid spoke.
“It seems you had a bad dream. I have served the Princess for more than a decade, yet this is the first time I have seen your face so pale.”
“…A vicious—”
I blinked.
“I had a vicious nightmare.”
“….”
“I thrashed so hard to wake up. But I simply couldn’t.”
“Is that so?”
“The nightmare was so long and endless that I had already let go of every hope. And yet, at the very moment I abandoned everything—”
I looked at the maid and smiled faintly.
“Waking like this makes me feel truly fortunate.”
“It seems you still cling to foolish hope.”
I flinched.
In the crimson twilight the maid quietly raised her head.
“The eons we have piled up could never end so emptily, could they?”
The face that lifted was my own—silver hair, silver eyes.
“Or do you mean to tell me that now, of all times, you have begun to trust the demonic? They are beings that must all be slaughtered and erased. The ones who set our journey in motion.”
The maid rose.
She crossed the empty room toward me.
“In this hellish life, that there is no one who will save us… you know that better than anyone, do you not? We must walk this path alone until we die. Until the day the rock becomes sand, and the sand becomes dust and scatters.”
She came to sit demurely beside me, who still wore the garments of a princess.
She stroked my black hair.
She stroked my black eyes.
As her fingers passed, the hair gradually turned silver.
The maid leaned in and whispered again against my ear, chuckling softly.
“Isn’t that so, Lady Eun Seollyeong?”
—CRAAASH!
A colossal roar smashed into another colossal roar.
—Papapat!
In Eun Seollyeong’s grip the Chamajeong flashed like a lightning-swift sword.
Noeje of the Eight Demon Dragons retreated, dodging every stroke.
But his speed was infinitely slow.
…!!
Right before her eyes the Eight Demon Dragon Noeje howled.
Nearly twice the height of an ordinary adult, his shriek shook heaven and earth.
He reset his iron bow and aimed forward.
—Flash!
A ferocious single-annihilation flash of light crashed toward Eun Seollyeong’s face.
“Khuk!”
Eun Seollyeong slid on one knee and bent her waist.
She flung her head back.
The flash grazed just past her forehead and struck the massive rock cliff behind her.
—KWAOOOM!!!
The night sky shuddered as the rock cliff exploded outward.
Kiiit…!
Noeje opened the mouth wrapped in bandages and loosed an unidentifiable monster’s cry.
He no longer looked human.
He was less a man than a malevolent spirit.
The black bandages were soaked with pus.
With every step Noeje took, pus and writhing maggots spilled from the footprints he left behind.
“Is that truly the destination you all desired?!”
Eun Seollyeong roared as she pressed Noeje hard.
“You abandoned the way of men! You discarded the human form, and as punishment your dantian was sealed, every sinew severed, and even your treasure core was reclaimed—yet if you were martial artists you should at least have possessed the pride to return to the dust!!”
The Chamajeong, cold as ice crystals, carved through Noeje’s entire body again and again.
Ki… kiaak!
Noeje flailed his limbs.
His giant footwork was endlessly sluggish.
His whole body split open and black blood fountained out.
Compared to that crawling footwork, the movement of his two arms was as swift as lightning.
At tremendous speed he repeatedly fed formless arrows onto the bow and loosed them at the Eun Seollyeong before him.
“Not a chance!”
Eun Seollyeong dodged the arrow aimed at her forehead and swung the Chamajeong once more.
—Seogeok!
Kraaagh!
Once the fight had become extreme close quarters, the bow could no longer exert its power.
Noeje’s hands twisted and tangled.
From the start he was a being who never allowed proximity.
Therefore, if some variable forced him to permit close range, it became a fatal weakness against the opponent before him.
When fighting at long range, Noeje preferred a sequence of seven rapid shots mixed with one heavy arrow.
But that principle had already collapsed, and he was now pouring out unstable rapid fire in continuous barrages.
The completeness of each shot had plummeted.
Noeje loosed a rapid volley toward the empty sky.
—Kwadududu!
—Kiyaaaa!
The flashes that had shot high into the heavens suddenly reversed direction and began to plunge vertically into the earth.
Eun Seollyeong’s eyes flared.
Hwanhwanmijongbo
—Papapat! Pat!
Transparent ice-light plum blossoms seemed to coil around Eun Seollyeong’s toes; in five steps she completely avoided the plunging flashes.
It was no longer a martial art so much as a single dance.
Not one breath, not one movement was wasted.
Buunyopyo
—Pabat!
Eun Seollyeong’s body spun halfway around. The tip of her left foot kicked off the ground; as that foot hung in the air, the tip of her right foot kicked off it in turn and she soared upward.
Azure ice plum blossoms thickened around her body as their center.
Between the folds of her martial robes, shards of blade shot into the air.
Eun Seollyeong cast the long-sword form of the Chamajeong upward above the blue full moon.
—Chaaeng!
With a clear ringing the Chamajeong shattered completely, scattering in every direction like fragments of ice.
…!
In Noeje’s black eyes as he looked at the sky, the blade shards scattering beneath the full-moon light were reflected.
Eun Seollyeong’s hand flicked.
The flying shards of the Chamajeong halted for an instant.
Then they plunged downward as her clear, ringing voice resounded.
Nakmaeseongu
—Swaeaeaek!
Like a torrential downpour the shards of the Chamajeong shot toward Noeje.
—Kwa-kwa-kwa! Kwajik! Jjeoeok!
Noeje’s entire body was shredded to pieces.
Aaaagh!
Noeje screamed.
He flailed the iron bow wildly trying to block, but his whole body was torn apart.
—Flutter!
White martial robes billowed in the air.
Her silver hair coiled around her white nape and then streamed out beneath the blue moonlight.
She was like a silver-white hawk.
Her cold silver eyes shone.
On her slender wrists and ankles, revealed when she lifted the hems of her robes, faint traces of shackles remained.
From her body a chill of ice qi poured out together with pale blue plum-blossom leaves.
“Cough…!”
Eun Seollyeong swallowed the blood-tinged cough that surged up from within.
A single streak of red blood spurted fiercely from her white lips and then ran down.
Eun Seollyeong drove into Noeje’s embrace.
Both palms opened.
Maehwachuyeongjang
Eleven successive palm strikes hammered the giant body of Noeje without pause.
—Kwadudu!
The internal organs of the Eight Demon Dragon Noeje convulsed. Black demonic qi mixed with blood sprayed from Noeje’s mouth.
Noeje cried out.
This is absurd… every martial art of the Mount Hua Sect…!
Noeje spoke in a sticky, phlegm-choked voice as if thrashing in desperation.
I understand…! Now I understand for certain! I know you, woman… you!
It was the first clear, intelligent speech the Eight Demon Dragon Noeje had ever uttered.
Gang Chisang…! The seductive witch that the expelled Guardian of the Jeomchang Sect spoke of—you are that woman!
Even beneath the blue moonlight it was plain to see.
Noeje’s body, being carved to pieces, was clearly steeped in black blood.
Yet Noeje absolutely refused to fall.
—Grit.
Under the blue moonlight Eun Seollyeong clenched her teeth, her face deathly pale.
Along the corners of her eyes, cold sweat ran down and soaked the hollow of her throat.
“Your Majesty the Emperor, I…! I—!”
I shouted through the rain.
I was dragged out by force.
I tumbled down the stairs. Even as my clothes tore I kept screaming.
“I am wronged!”
The man who was my father watched me in silence.
I shook off the soldiers gripping my arms.
I threw myself onto the floor.
He was always beyond the curtain of bamboo blinds.
“I thought only of the nation, only of the people!”
I had never once seen his face.
“For the single purpose that everyone might be happy…!”
Only a black shadow was the form of the man I could call father.
“I have lived until now for that one vision alone—!!”
The shadow’s voice rang out like a frost-edged command.
“What are you all doing?! Throw her out at once!!”
In the pouring rain the soldiers hesitated, then approached me.
“First Princess. Forgive us.”
“Please forgive us…!”
I was dragged away.
I was flung outside the gates.
I rolled through the mud.
The robes embroidered with a white dragon grew filthy with mire.
—Shaaa.
My body cooled by degrees under the cold rain.
Even so, everyone feared the emperor’s wrath and dared not come near me.
“Cast that woman out of the palace! See that she never appears before my eyes again! This is the last mercy I can show! If that woman appears before me once more, I will behead every last person involved, regardless of rank!”
With those words the shadow vanished deeper inside.
Everyone murmured.
“Heavens, how cruel. Even so, to cast her out the very moment a prince is born…”
“Hush, watch your tongue. The atmosphere in the imperial house is grim these days.”
The mutters around my prostrate body stabbed me like needles.
“Still, let’s speak fairly. Was it not the First Princess who stood at the front and righted this nation after the war left it weakened? Honestly, without the First Princess this country would have—”
Someone whose voice rose in indignation was checked again by another.
“Enough, man. Do you have two lives to spare?! However it may be, now that the long-awaited prince has been born, the Princess has no choice but to become a thorn in the eye, no matter what anyone says…”
Everyone scattered.
“Let’s go. If we linger we may catch the reverse wind ourselves.”
No one lifted me from where I lay in the rain.
I raised my head through the rain.
From that moment on, there was no one who would save me.
There was no one at all.
Far away I saw long poles.
Hundreds, thousands of them.
At their ends were the heads of the beheaded, impaled.
Without any covering they stood exposed beneath the cold rain.
There was the head of the chief maid who had cared for me since the day I was born.
There were the subordinates who had followed me with loyalty.
“Jin… Maehyang… Jongha…”
They did not answer.
They simply closed their eyes as if sleeping.
In the torrential rain, tears colder than the rain itself ran from both my eyes.
I realized that in this world I was left completely alone.
It was then.
“…Truth be told, I was invited myself, so I feel awkward as well. But leaving you ignored in this downpour doesn’t sit right either.”
I turned my head.
A man cleared his throat under the rain.
Even so he kept glancing around, anxious that someone might witness the scene.
“If you truly have nowhere to go, how about coming once to the world where I live?”
When I stared at him without a word through my rain-soaked black hair, the man continued in flustered haste.
“Some call it the rivers and lakes, others the murim. It is bleak, yet at times it shows a scenery that still feels human.”
Beneath the downpour stood a man with a bamboo hat pulled low.
“The murim…?”
“That’s right.”
It was a world I had certainly heard of from the chief maid.
People from that world had come at the invitation of an emperor who loved martial arts, demonstrated their skills, and sometimes helped train the imperial army.
The man added,
“And between us, this is a secret, but I also serve as a Guardian of the Jeomchang Sect—something of a figure of note in our world. With my recommendation, there should be no problem for you to make a new start there.”
I looked at the man.
Through cracked lips I asked,
“…What is your name?”
At my question the man’s face relaxed.
“My name is Gang Chisang. Gang Chisang.”