The Fairy? and the Woodcutter (3)
The Fairy? and the Woodcutter (3)
The Death God Cult had deep roots in China.
Beneath its hundreds of branches lay the headquarters where Sect Leader Gyeol-won dwelled.
In the depths of those grounds, a vast cavern lay swallowed in darkness. It had always been dim, but now even its original light sources were gone.
Hidden in the shadows, Gyeol-won's face contorted.
Crack! A rupturing sound rang out from inside him—the noise of something twisting the wrong way and breaking.
His eyes flew open. The blood vessels burst, tinting his already dark vision with a crimson haze.
Gyeol-won clamped his jaw shut.
"Ghk, grrrhk...!"
Bloody foam seeped through his clenched teeth.
The cause was the necromancy he was still sustaining, an art far beyond his capacity.
This was never part of the plan.
In such an ill-prepared state, he had never intended to enact the plan at all.
He had barely acquired the Twin-headed Poison Dragon's corpse. It was incomplete, but he had been slowly filling in the missing pieces with scavenged byproducts.
The sacrifices were lacking, too. To resurrect such a high-ranked being against the natural order, a proportional price was required.
He had established branches across various regions of China, dispatching believers to gather the worms to be used as sacrifices. He had nearly been wiped out once when the Association caught his tail, but he had barely managed to escape.
After that, he moved with caution. He lowered the quality and quantity of the sacrifices to delay the plan, pouring all his effort into safety and security.
Then, recently, some crazy bastards had crawled in and started crushing the branches that were procuring those very sacrifices.
It was an outrage that sent his blood boiling in reverse, but Gyeol-won had ground his teeth until they nearly shattered and endured it.
That piece of trash called Faceless.
Their skills were too sharp for mere believers to handle. There were also whispers they belonged to the Association's Execution Department. If Gyeol-won personally stepped forward to kill Faceless, he risked being tracked again.
Those Taesan bastards.
Even their successor had crawled in to wreak havoc. Gyeol-won could kill them if he acted himself, but the repercussions were impossible to bear.
If he killed them? Both the Association, already on his tail, and the full might of Taesan, enraged by the loss of their heir, would crash down upon this land.
And so he endured.
He prepared to hide once more in a deeper, darker place. A shitty situation, but he had already endured for decades. A few more years meant nothing.
Then, his god delivered a revelation.
Do not hide deep. Execute the plan immediately.
Kill the Successor of Taesan—and more importantly, kill that piece of trash Faceless.
He had acted. And now Gyeol-won was suffering the backlash of performing an act beyond his means.
"Grrrhk...!"
His vision swam. His consciousness faded. In the dark void, he could see death striding closer.
That in itself was not frightening. To Gyeol-won, who worshipped the Death God, death was simply the entrance to a paradise he would one day enter.
It should have been a welcome sight, but not now.
He had yet to fulfill the revelation. The command had been delivered personally by the Death God. He had to see it through, whatever the sacrifice.
Gyeol-won had always been ready to martyr himself, but even so, he lacked the power to fulfill this revelation.
It should have been impossible.
Yet divine blessing had been with him. For a moment, he had manifested necromantic power far beyond his capability. A power that was not his own—a distant, higher authority had descended upon him.
He had succeeded in a necromantic rite that should never have succeeded. Though imperfect and degraded, he had managed to raise the Twin-headed Poison Dragon as an undead and command it.
In exchange, a horrific backlash arrived.
"Kuuurgh...!!"
His innards felt inverted. His mana circuits twisted with a grinding crunch, and his core screeched in protest. An excruciating pain, as if his whole body were being torn apart in a shredder, crashed over him.
If he let his consciousness slip for even a moment, his body might simply burst.
The chaotic collision of mana and undead repulsion inside him wrenched his face into a grotesque shape.
'The backlash... is fiercer than expected.'
Necromancy was a complex art, requiring one to manipulate corpses drained of life and handle the souls extracted from those bodies.
Moreover, the undead he was attempting to control was the Twin-headed Poison Dragon, a monster classified as 3rd-Rank Alpha.
Even with meticulous preparation, it would have been an extraordinarily difficult task.
Yet this necromantic ritual had been conducted in a half-baked state.
The dragon's corpse was insufficient. Too many parts had been lost. Most crucially, he had not been able to secure one of the heads—the one that would have housed a unique ability.
The sacrifices were lacking as well. Though he had collected a significant portion, the scarcity had caused the quality to plummet.
The burden on the caster had multiplied several times over.
Gyeol-won turned his head.
Behind him, his fellow believers lay strewn across the floor. All were worshippers of the Death God, each competent in necromancy in their own right.
They were all dead. Killed instantly, unable to endure the strain. In effect, they were nothing but sacrifices to lighten Gyeol-won's burden. They had martyred themselves with ecstasy, their lives offered to the Death God.
Yet even so, Gyeol-won stood at death's door. Without those sacrifices, he too would have burst and died on the spot.
"What a sorry state. Hard to tell who the real corpse is around here."
A carefree voice slithered into Gyeol-won's ears. At the same time, deliberate footsteps cut through the ringing tinnitus in his head.
A man walked briskly toward Gyeol-won and stopped near the only remaining light source.
The dim glow illuminated him, revealing deep red eyes and hair.
"Tsk, tsk..."
The man's gaze swept over the dead believers.
Their skin revealed mana circuits that hadn't merely necrotized—they had exploded. They lay sprawled with blood pouring from every hole in their faces.
The man's face crumpled in disgust.
They had been screaming about martyrdom for this. Truly a special breed of lunatics.
"What business... do you have here...?"
Gyeol-won barely managed to speak. Just shaping the words was exhausting while enduring this backlash.
"Not much? I just came to watch, since the rumors were so interesting."
After all that effort to speak, that was the reply he got.
Gyeol-won's expression twisted.
"Oh, it can get even worse? What a remarkable face you've got there."
"You mad... thing... do you not see... a great work?"
"It's a great work to you, but to us, it's nothing worth seeing. Don't drag us into it."
"Nonsense... your god... also desires war... if so—"
"God?"
The man cut him off, blinking vacantly as if he didn't understand.
Then, apparently grasping the meaning, his mouth opened slightly and a small exclamation escaped him.
"A god? That thing? Haha!"
He burst into loud laughter. The booming noise filled the cavern. Gyeol-won's brow furrowed at the high pitch rattling his skull.
"You lunatic. You're sitting there worshipping that as a god."
At those words, Gyeol-won's face didn't just crumple—it shattered into a horrid mess.
Crunch! Gyeol-won ground his teeth. A chilling crack came from teeth already riddled with fractures.
Gyeol-won glared at the man, eyes bulging as if they might tear.
"You... bastard... watch your... worthless tongue...!"
"Who do you think you're ordering around? Besides, why are you the one getting angry? I'm the one feeling disgusted here. Don't lump me in with a cultist like you."
The dying Gyeol-won exuded a murderous aura. The killing intent of a necromancer who had reached a profound realm swallowed the cavern whole.
It was a force potent enough to make an ordinary person faint from mere exposure.
The man facing him didn't falter in the slightest. Instead, he scoffed and unleashed his own pressure, crushing the killing intent instantly.
Boom! The cavern walls shook from the impact. Dust and debris rained down from the ceiling.
"Keuk..."
"Even if I'm a toothless tiger, you think I'd lose to some back-alley relic like you?"
The man's lips curled into a sneer.
"If you want to finish whatever's left of your life, stay still. I might just snuff you out myself before you die naturally. I'm just here to watch."
Gyeol-won was dying. He would be dead soon. Treatment might decide whether he lasted a few more days, weeks... or perhaps only hours.
In the man's eyes, he wouldn't last another month.
Silence stretched for a moment.
"Ha."
The silence broke.
With bloody foam in his mouth, Gyeol-won let out a scornful laugh.
"Amusing."
"Huh?"
Does this guy really want to die? The man blinked.
"You... are merely a thrall... subjugated by your god... with that shallow judgement... you cannot... kill me."
At those words, the man's face hardened into a cold mask.
No killing intent rose. Instead, the man's hand moved with an emotionless expression.
As his hand reached for the sword at his waist, it froze. It was as if an invisible force had seized his arm mid-air.
Crunch. Veins bulged across the back of his hand. His fingers trembled faintly.
- Fwoosh!
Flames erupted. A viscous, dark crimson fire flickered around his hand.
But his hand did not move.
"... Fucking bastard."
The man spat the curse quietly.
It was aimed at both the old man sneering before him and at the damned thing that controlled him.
He released the tension in his hand. The flames subsided.
And with that, the force holding him back vanished.
"Ah, shit. Looking at the state of you, you'll croak soon enough anyway. I'm just gonna head back."
The man grimaced deeply and turned around.
Gyeol-won spoke to his retreating back.
"Do not... worry... I will fulfill the revelation... and head to paradise."
The man's steps came to an abrupt halt.
"Fulfill and go...? I wonder about that. I don't really think you'll fulfill anything."
"... What basis... do you have to dare... deny a god's revelation?"
The man paused as if thinking, then turned his head to glance at Gyeol-won.
"Just a feeling."
"... Mad... thing."
A reply not even worth responding to.
Gyeol-won's face crumpled.