104. Final Training
104. Final Training
-Clang, clang.
At some point, the sound of metal striking metal began reaching my ears.
It was the ring of a hammer against an anvil, and I felt my dazed consciousness being pulled toward its source.
At the end of that pull, I found myself facing the image of a craftsman hammering away in a room blazing with heat.
-Clang, clang!
For some reason, the sight of the craftsman repeating that motion felt deeply familiar.
Even though his hair had gone white as ash, and the eyes gazing down at the forge held no trace of life.
'When you are complete.'
But the emotion I sensed in that voice felt utterly alien.
I was certain this was the person I knew.
Yet what stood before me now was a side of him I could never have imagined.
'If the day comes when you stand before me again, just as you did back then... will I finally understand what this feeling inside me is?'
Was it because this was a dream?
Or was it because a side of him I'd never known was being reflected and projected through the shape of this dream?
****
-Wooong.
After that, my mind cleared at the faint sound of a vibration.
Drawn by it, I pulled myself up from the bed, and my gaze went straight to the spear leaning against the bedside.
Ego Weapon Pilloi.
A weapon housing the soul of a child who had closed off her heart after the clash that day.
"...Philoi."
For a moment, I wondered if she had moved. But even as I drew closer, that same vibration didn't come again.
She simply lay still, as if to tell me that what I'd felt earlier had been my imagination.
Was it too much to hope that she'd acknowledge me after only the training I'd managed so far?
"...No, too early to be disappointed."
Hadn't I spent the past month here training relentlessly, over and over?
After achieving explosive growth in that time, losing heart now would be absurd.
If there's a place to climb to, I just have to keep climbing.
"Right. Almost time."
Having renewed the resolve I recited every morning, I stroked Philoi's spear shaft and got ready to head to the training ground.
Donning my armor, wolfing down preserved rations for breakfast...
"Oh my, Hyosung."
Just as I was about to leave the lodging, a familiar face passing by greeted me.
Marilyn Sutherland.
Like Airi, a woman I wanted to keep at my side in the future—if she'd allow it.
"Good morning. Off to training?"
"Yes. And you, Miss Marilyn? Off to perform again today?"
She too had been faithfully fulfilling her role as a bard, contributing to this garrison zone in her own way.
Her performances lifted people's spirits and breathed vitality into their work.
The only shame was that lately, with how focused I'd been on training, I had no time to listen to her play.
"Hmm, well. I don't think I'll have time today either—I'm making a gift for you, Hyosung."
When she gave me that meaningful smile, I felt my curiosity gradually stirring.
"A gift... for me?"
"Hehe, you can look forward to it."
With that, Marilyn hummed a tune and walked away.
Part of me wanted to press her for details, but in the end, I pulled my attention away from her and resumed preparing to head to the training ground.
Right—if we were going to meet later, there was no need to feel impatient now.
"Everything's going to work out."
It might have been my imagination, but Philoi had reacted, and I was due to receive encouragement from Marilyn soon.
And Airi, whom I'd met before going to sleep last night, hadn't mentioned any particularly ominous futures either.
So firmly believing that today would be a day where everything went smoothly, I walked toward the training site without hesitation.
And then...
****
-Crunch, crack.
When I arrived at the cave designated as the training site, a chilling noise met my ears.
Since the place was lit by the faint glow unique to dragon veins, it wasn't hard to confirm what was happening inside.
"Krrrrk, kaaaah...!"
Undead.
They were supposed to have been completely exterminated not long ago, but just yesterday there'd been a report that undead within the Corpse Lord's sphere of influence were targeting this place.
Which meant the possibility now existed of undead appearing inside the excavation site again.
No matter how much the imperial army managed this location, there was no guarantee that stragglers wouldn't slip in and attack people.
"What the hell did you..."
Yes—probably to someone who had been waiting for me here.
"What the hell did you do, you sons of bitches!!!"
The moment the thread of my reason snapped, I swung the spear in my hand at the undead with everything I had.
The waves of mana generated by my surging emotions coursed through my armor into the spear, and then the weapon extended forward, tearing the corpses' bodies to shreds.
By the time I reached Jang, I had already turned every undead in this place to mincemeat.
"Old man. Old man!"
But by then, his body was already in a ruinous state.
However strong he had once been, it was a frail body that could not overcome the passage of time.
And the undead that had assaulted that body without hesitation had mercilessly torn apart not just the surface but everything within, stuffing it into their mouths over and over.
Even after enduring such horrors so vividly, his body showed not the slightest twitch.
"...Old man."
Acceptance of reality came with terrifying speed.
I had seen countless people die, after all.
But the reason the shock hit me like a blow to the back of the head in this moment was that, among all those who had died, the people I had given my heart to were so very few.
In a world where dying at any moment was nothing strange, a person you could cooperate with and form a bond with was more precious than gold.
"Why."
I had watched such a person breathe his last overnight.
Just seeing that was enough to make me feel a pain that seemed to tear my living flesh apart from the inside.
"Why the hell... did something like this..."
If only I'd paid more attention to the situation.
If I had noticed what he failed to notice beforehand, I might have been able to prevent an accident like this—the guilt pressing down on me was unbearable.
-Rustle.
Just as I felt that regret swelling up, I heard the sound of paper scraping against stone.
A single sheet of paper, stirred by the faint breeze blowing through the cave, had slipped from atop a rock and drifted down before me.
A note, obviously left there deliberately.
Given the circumstances, it could only be from Jang. With trembling hands, I reached for the letter.
[Do not burden yourself with guilt. It is not your fault.]
The opening line struck at the exact feelings I was experiencing in this moment.
The words that followed, calmly written, also showed that he had foreseen a situation like this.
[If anything, it is remarkable that I survived this long. When one takes upon their body a power too great to bear, it is only natural that the more one uses it, the more one's lifespan dwindles.]
"...Old man."
A power too great to bear.
Was he talking about those powers he had demonstrated while training me?
Was he saying that the power he had wielded more skillfully than me—still in the middle of training—had broken his body in the very act of showing me those demonstrations?
[Still, I cannot quite leave without lingering regrets. No matter how much you may have your own desires, the truth is that the decision to train you began from my own selfishness.]
Even as the questions mounted, I tried to etch every line of the letter into my mind.
Having never prepared myself to lose a guide, I had no choice but to cling all the more desperately to the last trace he had left behind.
[Yes, at first it was nothing more than revenge. Not for any great cause, nothing like that... It was simply revenge for having lost the one I admired.]
Of course, most of it was beyond my understanding.
I had been so focused solely on training for the past month that I had never asked carefully about his circumstances.
Why he had wanted to make me into a Hero despite possessing a talent even I hadn't known about, what he had felt in his heart during the process of training me, and what he felt toward Tachia, whom I would eventually have to face.
[Why I, who was once like that, stopped seeking revenge and instead chose to watch over the one I meant to destroy... Even now, as I write this letter, I am not certain it was the right choice.]
But one thing was clear.
The man who had trained me had shown flickers of skepticism toward the long years he had lived, and the more I sensed that, the more fervently he threw himself into my training.
[It was only natural that things turned out this way. Even a feeble insect may kill a man if it bites a vital spot—but an insect that does nothing but watch can never change a man.]
He had come face to face with his own limits, and now, having finally grasped the power to change something, he had grown far too old.
So he must have placed greater hopes in me, the one who would follow after him.
[But with you, it may be different. I, who could only watch, was nothing more than an annoying insect to her... But you are loved by her enough to melt into her life.]
-Rustle.
The hand holding the letter tightened its grip.
Even so, I kept reading.
[I do not know what form that love takes, but it is surely a fact that she regards you as more special than any other human being.]
I had to know what I must carry on even after his death.
And to feel the weight of what awaited me ahead.
[And that must be the same for you as well. You too hold uncommon feelings toward her, so were you not in conflict every single moment even while training with me?]
I need power.
Even if it's to accept the fate that would make me kill the one who had given me her heart.
Or to defy such a fate entirely.
[So do not be afraid, and make ready your heart. Devote yourself to growing your strength so that when the decisive moment comes, you may choose, from among the choices presented to you, the one that aligns with your will.]
[Even if the world calls your choice wrong, if you possess the power to overturn even that judgment, no one will be able to raise an objection against you.]
The letter ended with that encouragement to take up such a calling.
Though the contents were filled with concern for me to the very end, I still felt the road ahead stretching out bleakly before me.
"Old man, I..."
Even knowing what I had to do, hadn't the one who was meant to guide me disappeared?
Could I truly manage well without him...?
While such anxieties still churned restlessly inside my heart, I noticed that the back of the letter in my hand also bore writing.
And then...
-Krrr, urgh.
The moment I finished reading those contents, a groan sounded from behind me.
My guard flaring up, I turned my gaze toward the source of the sound—and in that instant, I felt my breath catch in my throat.
[And lastly, one more thing. Shameless as it is, I have one final request to make of you.]
It was just an undead.
No different from the ones I had been killing all along—nothing more than a moving corpse that could no longer be called alive.
Even if it had an ego, I knew that was nothing more than traces of replayed memories of the past.
[This letter is meant to resolve the final lingering regret of an old man soon to depart this world... But even so, if regret still remains after writing this, I hope that you will resolve it in my stead.]
My head understood this.
But why was it?
"Ah... aah."
Why did my mouth, faced with that dead man,
let out a lament tinged with a despair deeper than any I'd ever felt before?
****
It had been, quite simply, a life lived for revenge against his idol.
He had taken unsanctioned power into his body and grimly sharpened a blade for vengeance.
But the one meant to be the target of that vengeful heart—why had she been crying that day?
Why had she created a weapon from a replica she called a soul extracted from her daughter's corpse, and why had she looked down upon such an existence with what could only be called sorrow?
'Could a calamity even feel sorrow? Is she truly something that deserves to be called a calamity?'
He could not imagine it, and even seeing it with his own eyes, he could not understand it.
He began to doubt whether she was truly the target he had meant to take revenge on, and so he chose to observe her from up close.
Though he had even resolved to draw his sword if she showed the slightest sign of rampage, that moment never came, and more than half a century slipped away.
And throughout that process, he had always tried to understand.
Why had she, that day, continued her life by entering into a contract she never needed to make?
Why did a transcendent being who had lived through ages no human could dare imagine—why did she continue to watch over humanity even while suffering the torment of prolonging her own life?
'Miss Tachia always cooked for me.'
Yes. He would never know.
That the answer he could not find even if he invested his entire lifetime existed within the kindness she had shown him.
He had simply denied it and called it false. But the answer had been decided from the very first moment he saw her shed tears that day.
'Even if she has lived for ten thousand years, perhaps in the last hundred, she has come to possess a heart no different from a human's.'
It was only that she herself had not realized it, and so she kept denying it—because if she acknowledged it, she would have to accept the weight of what she had done.
By the time he realized this, he felt the vengeful heart he had held toward her quietly withering away.
Because he had come to understand that a punishment far beyond what he could ever dare to bear was already tormenting her through the ages she had lived—just as it had him.
Yes. Revenge had lost all meaning. His resentment had long since crumbled and scattered with the passage of time.
So he would surely be able to accept the end of his life without any lingering regrets.
That was what he had believed...
'But... is it truly all right for it to end like this?'
In the moment he reached the close of that life.
Within the heart of the man who had finished his reflections and prepared for eternal rest, a worry he had not even recognized himself began to bloom.
'Is it truly... acceptable for it to end like this?'
Had he trained that young man in order to entrust his revenge to another?
No—revenge was utterly meaningless now.
And precisely because it was meaningless, he felt all the years he had spent chasing it turning to nothing but emptiness.
At the root of his declaration to make that young man into a Hero had been not some great cause, but disillusionment with a life like this.
'This isn't enough.'
He wanted to watch that journey a little longer.
'If it is permitted... just a little... more...'
If he could not watch, then at the very least, he wanted to nurture within him even a little more strength to overcome the road ahead.
-Crackle, pop.
In this moment, that lingering regret mingled with the ominous power that had seeped into his body as it was devoured, and together they gave rise to a certain phenomenon.
Using his body, rapidly rotting and crumbling from the corrupting power, as a framework...
And using himself as a 'tool' to resolve the unfinished attachments of that life.
"Old... man..."
"Take up... the spear. Young man."
Seizing such an opportunity, the risen dead man speaks.
His eyes, now drained of life, glint sharply, and from his parched throat he wrings out his voice, determined to be faithful to his lingering attachment.
"From this moment... the final training... begins."
"Training, you say..."
"The rule... is simple. Using everything... you have learned so far... strike down the dead man... standing before you."
To the very end of the end.
And even beyond that end, in this moment after all was finished—by becoming a trial to block his path, if he was permitted to do so.
"I trust you will not retreat after coming this far. If you truly call yourself a Hero... you could not possibly leave such a monster to roam free in this world."
Even if the world went on after his own death.
Believing that even this would be something that gave his life meaning, he sought to carve that will deeply into the one who would follow after him.
"So take up the spear."
The soul that had dwelt in that body must have departed this world with such faith.
"Take up the spear, Hero."
Because the husk knew that such faith was the reason it had risen.
The shell that had lost its soul did not hesitate to carry on its calling.
"If you are truly a Hero, should you not brush aside one wretched revenant like this and press on?"
Even after that life had reached its final curtain.
No one knew better than he that the stories of those who inherit it would continue on.