15. Live, You Are Beautiful!
15. Live, You Are Beautiful!
Undead.
They were a familiar sight back in the world I came from—zombie movies and all. The undead of this world weren't much different from the ones plastered across those films, in form or behavior.
Most of the time they just shambled around aimlessly. Then, the moment a living person crossed their path, they'd swarm in a frenzy and tear into their flesh.
And the corpses they left behind would steep in that ominous magical power, eventually rising as the same kind of walking corpses themselves.
"Graaaaaaaagh!"
Right. The reason the Death Knight dragged me and the other survivors back to his garrison was to sift through us for useful specimens—and convert them into undead to swell his ranks.
Specifically, undead with their own egos. Just like him.
The screams I'd heard earlier came from the process of slaughtering the ones who didn't make the cut—or who'd simply gotten on his nerves.
"Hey. Can you hear me?"
Those very screams were drawing closer. With the creeping certainty that my turn was next, I spoke to the figures standing guard beyond the iron bars.
Living corpses clutching rusted armor and broken spear shafts, their flesh rotting.
"U-uhh."
All they could do was turn their heads at my voice. Actual speech was beyond them.
Yes, their tongues had stiffened and their vocal cords were blocked—but with magical power, they should have been able to convey at least some form of intent.
The reason they couldn't speak was because they had no ego. And without an ego to guide it, they couldn't handle the mana needed to exert their strength.
"Um... my name is Woo Hyosung. What's your name?"
"W-woo..."
"Wooo-ong..."
Only guttural moans came in answer.
And in that dazed, pitiful display, I ironically caught a faint glimpse of my own future.
When my turn came, would I end up like them?
Or would I vanish without a trace like the Holy Knight Commander, my body not even leaving a corpse behind?
-Clank.
As I sat there with that anxiety gnawing at me, the iron bars swung open, and a knight in black armor strode through the moaning crowd toward me.
"You've been obedient, I see."
The Death Knight.
One of the Four Horsemen who served the Corpse Lord—that calamity which, alongside the Demon Lord's army from the other world, had driven this world to the brink of ruin.
And proving that station, the sheer crushing weight of his presence was enough to suffocate me just by standing before him.
"Well, I'm a prisoner. Resisting wouldn't accomplish much..."
"Many could not manage even that much restraint. They ran wild instead. I deemed such creatures unworthy of standing beside me, and I crushed them into paste."
As he spoke, he lifted the greatsword in his hand.
Its surface was caked in grime—someone's flesh and blood, still clinging to the blade.
As if to say: my mere lack of resistance had earned me a passing grade.
"You there. Let us have a conversation."
For all his brutality, the Death Knight wasn't raising his sword against me. He was opening a dialogue instead.
"A conversation?"
"Indeed. Simply by talking, I can gauge whether there is any possibility you might awaken as a being like myself."
Despite the name "Death," his manner was thoroughly that of a knight—courteous, disciplined.
"You who came from another world. You who failed to awaken the power you desired and were cast into a wretched station."
A Foreign Worker.
He had discerned my true identity from the start. Having done so, the Death Knight posed his question.
"In your life, is there something you must accomplish?"
The question caught me deeply off guard.
And the words that followed were no different.
"...Something I must accomplish?"
"Anything will do. What you wish to become. Amassing wealth. Living for someone—family, for instance. Even dedicating your entire life to vengeance. It matters not."
His helmeted head tilted slowly downward, and the light blazing inside began to burn fiercer, boring into me.
"Is there anything—anything at all—that you so desperately regret leaving unfinished in life that you would cling to this world? Any desire from which you can draw a burning passion?"
Yes, it was a sincere question.
I could feel it in his gaze. He wasn't mocking me. He genuinely wanted an answer. And depending on how I answered, my survival would be decided as well.
"...I'm not sure. There's nothing in particular, really."
But what was the point of racking my brain here?
Honestly, I was so drained I couldn't even summon a desperate desire to survive the situation.
"Truly?"
"Well, I mean... there are plenty of things I'd like to do, sure. But I can't help thinking—what's the point, really?"
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't afraid to die.
But I also couldn't shake the thought that staying alive just meant more hellish suffering anyway.
"...You have things you wish to achieve, yet you consider them unimportant. Why have you come to think this way?"
"Because no matter what I want, I never get a real chance to achieve it."
He'd recognized me as a Foreign Worker right away, so he had to know.
That the people summoned to this world were divided into a tiny handful of Heroes who received preferential treatment—and a vast mass of laborers with nothing but mediocre abilities.
"Setting some grand goal just feels like torturing yourself with false hope, I guess... If my life's just going to be drifting along half-assed until the end, then maybe letting it end here wouldn't be so bad."
Yeah. Because I had neither the power to survive in this dying world, nor the strength to endure the malice of the people still trying to survive in it.
I'd struggle until the bitter end, sure. But when death came, I had made peace with accepting it calmly. The only thing I really hoped for was that the very end, at least, would be painless. That one modest wish was all I held onto.
-Clank.
Just as I had resigned myself and braced for the end to arrive...
The Death Knight lowered himself, bending one knee to the ground, and met my eyes at level.
"How regrettable."
"...Excuse me?"
"I find you truly regrettable. You have ambition, yet your birth was feeble, and this cruel world has rejected you—denying you even the chance to burn your life away."
This was a situation where dying on the spot wouldn't have surprised me.
But instead, he revealed sympathy for me. He reached up and smoothly removed the helmet covering his head, exposing his bare face.
"...You there. Look upon me."
Though his voice carried emotion, the face he revealed bore no expression.
What appeared was a single skull, stained and cracked with age.
His voice came through, but with no muscles to move his jaw, his teeth remained permanently parted. And the empty sockets, with no eyeballs, simply channeled the light burning within to simulate a gaze.
"Unlike you, though I possess an ego, I can never be called alive. Even these bones are nothing more than a framework to sustain the existence that is 'me'..."
His eye-light, his voice—all of it was produced by magical power.
Guided by the ego he maintained, his magic merely recreated a semblance of what he had been in life. These were the markers that branded him as one of the living corpses risen from death.
"Even this—if the 'lingering regret' that forces this existence onward were to vanish, I would surely crumble, unable to endure, and scatter into nothing."
"...Lingering regret?"
"Yes. To create an undead with an ego such as myself, a powerful lingering regret toward life is required. A passion greater than the mere survival instinct all living creatures are born with!"
Is there something you must accomplish in life?
That earlier question had been the minimum requirement to determine whether I possessed such a passion.
"Now, in this moment, as the day my lingering regret is finally resolved draws near... do you know what I find most regrettable of all?"
"...What is it?"
"That while I was still alive, I did not harbor a greater regret."
He had defied death itself to pursue his lingering regret, yet now he lamented that it was coming to an end.
That was the kind of being the Death Knight I faced truly was.
"The more my regret is resolved, the more my interest in my original purpose fades—and that interest is gradually turning toward this world. The earth I can tread with my own two feet, the sky I can gaze upon with my own two eyes... The more I sense the will of those living in this world, the deeper my lament grows: why could I not have lived my life more fully while I still had it?"
A wistfulness that couldn't even crystallize into a true lingering regret.
Since that alone couldn't sustain his undead existence, he was a being fated to be consumed by an ever-deepening remorse.
"Had I pursued more while I was alive, I could have remained in this world longer—even in a body such as this."
"......"
"...You there."
-Thoom!
The greatsword in his hand slammed point-first into the ground.
Not to kill me. It was merely an expression of his will—a gesture to draw my entire attention onto him.
"You consider your own life worthless, yet ironically, I find myself envying you. Because I failed to live my life to the fullest and now lament this deathly existence as my regret gradually fades—I envy you, who still possesses the chance to struggle at all."
The light blazing from the two eyes staring at me from beyond the greatsword grew sharper still.
"So why is it that you, who still possess the chance to struggle, stand before me—a dead man—and feel only disillusionment?"
His fervor alone surpassed that of ordinary people who merely lived because they couldn't die.
It was enough to make my own heart—still alive, still breathing—pound in response.
"...You don't think a life of nothing but desperate flailing is just... pathetic?"
Seeing him like that, something like hope began to stir in me.
Me, who was just living because I couldn't die.
Because it felt as though even this life of mine—he was affirming it, telling me it held meaning.
"Ridiculous words. A life is only meaningful when you struggle desperately. A life without desperation—wouldn't that be the truly tedious, hollow existence?"
-Shing!
Then the tip of the greatsword pulled free from the floor and leveled itself at me.
"To you, who struggled so desperately, only to grow exhausted when hope could not be found—I ask you this."
Yes, it had come.
The moment of judgment, arrived at the end of our exchange.
"If by even the slimmest chance you could escape this place safely and return to where you belong—how would you live?"
What answer would be the right one?
My deliberation didn't last long.
This wasn't a problem to solve—it was simply a question.
When faced with an open-ended question, what I had to do was obvious.
"I'd just... live however it goes. Same as I always have."
Answer honestly with whatever came to mind the moment I heard the question, without overthinking it.
"Even if that life turns out the same as it has always been?"
"It's a life where I'm living because I can't die—but even so, I don't plan on giving up."
"Even in a world so harsh that those like you struggle merely to survive!?"
"Even then. I've got to live until I die. And above all—adapting well no matter where I'm thrown, that's one of my greatest talents."
Back in my job-hunting days, I always put that line on every résumé.
If I gave up now, I'd never get to use that particular strength again, would I?
"...An admirable spirit."
-Crash!
The moment the greatsword swung and shattered the iron bars...
The Death Knight opened a path through the gap and gestured with his chin for me to go through.
"You there. What I desire is no mere corpse that simply continues to exist. It is a being whose lingering regret can fuel passion even without flesh and blood... You have no such lingering regret yet, but you possess the potential to harbor one stronger than anyone else."
So he would give me a chance, and bet on that potential.
If I survived, and survived again, and the day finally came when I truly found that answer—then he would make his offer once more.
"If fate brings us together again at the end of that life you lead—I shall offer you a choice then. Whether to stand at my side, or not."
"...Even if the path I choose isn't to your liking?"
"I shall respect that as well—if it is truly your choice. Provided you can indeed bear that path."
Srrrk.
The moment the blade of his greatsword gleamed with a cold blue edge...
Just looking at it made me realize that what he was granting me wasn't mercy—it was merely a stay of execution. I steadied my pounding heart and walked past him, slipping out through the broken bars.
I didn't know if things would work out, but at least I had survived. For now—let's try to prolong this life just a little longer.
"One last question."
Just as I was about to leave, he stopped me.
"You there. What is your name?"
"Woo Hyosung."
"I see. Woo Hyosung. I shall remember it. I pray the day comes when that name reaches my ears once more."
I paused mid-step and glanced back.
Then he raised his greatsword high overhead and shouted toward me.
"Live. For you are beautiful!!!"
With not a scrap of flesh or muscle remaining.
Raising his skeletal frame by sheer lingering regret alone, lingering in this world—a Death Knight who revered the preciousness of life more deeply than anyone alive was shouting at me.
"Lead that beautiful life, and go forth to find the place where your soul shall burn! Live with such ferocity that the day may come when your lingering regret carries meaning even after you have departed this world...!"
"...Heh. Well, damn."
The sheer irony of the situation made me let out a dry laugh without meaning to.
I'd seen all kinds of things since coming to this world, but I never expected the day would come when a self-aware living corpse would encourage me and spare my life.
But then again—that this was how my life got extended must be my fate as well.
Yeah. If I was going to live a life where I couldn't even manage to die, then powerless as I was, I'd flail as hard as I could and do my best to pile up at least some lingering attachment to this life.
"Wh-what the hell! Let me go right now!!"
Just as I was stoking that dying ember of will to live, a voice rang out from the opposite direction.
Right as I entered the corridor leading to the exit, there were the undead grunts following the Death Knight's orders—binding someone and dragging them along.
A woman with rare pink hair, dressed in an outfit that practically screamed "adventurer" at a single glance.
"You filthy corpses! You have no idea who I am, treating me so roughly... Huh? Wait!"
The woman spotted me walking from the opposite direction, and her eyes went wide with disbelief.
"Wh-whaa? Hold on. Why is that guy unrestrained!? Why is he heading for the exit when I'm not!?"
Well, sure. If you got captured by undead while adventuring, seeing another human walking around free and clear would be pretty baffling.
But whatever happened next was her fate. With that thought, I headed straight for the exit while listening to the sounds behind me.
"You there. I shall now ask you a few questions..."
"Shut your mouth, you damn pile of bones! Do you have any idea who I am, shoving that worthless excuse for a face in front of me and ruining my mood!?"
"...You."
"If you're going to flap those filthy jaws, go get whoever's in charge and get lost! I'm a captured Hero, and I need to see the face of the bastard who thinks he can treat me like this!"
"......"
"What's wrong with you? Why'd you go quiet? Is your skull so empty you can't even hear me properly!? You ignorant, brainless moron..."
-Thoom!
The sound of a greatsword being raised.
I had a pretty good idea how things would go from there. I turned my attention away and stepped toward the exit.
"Die. You are hideous!"
"Wh-what... Gyaaagh!"
"A human with a filthy heart has no worth in living. So die—a wretched wretch like you deserves to be erased from this world forever!"
-Crunch. Crunch!!
The sound of a greatsword pulverizing flesh echoed through the corridor.
I turned my back on the noise without a shred of hesitation and, escorted by the Death Knight's undead attendants, set off on the journey back.
Powerless as I was, I carried a new realization in my heart: even desperate flailing held meaning.
And I reminded myself once more: no matter how broken this world became, maintaining at least basic courtesy could prevent a spontaneous execution.