Chapter 24
"Especially for a parasite like you that latches onto someone else's body."
I leveled my sword at the black snake looking down at me.
"Ssssss!!"
The black snake bared its teeth, opening its mouth wide. The tongue I’d cut off it had already regenerated before I knew it.
It was radiating murderous intent, but it was also confused. Why was that thing still alive after taking my attack head-on? No, more than alive — every last limb and joint was still attached.
"You’ve still got the brain to think, huh. Pretty comfy, aren’t you?"
"!"
The moment Geom Mujin’s voice rang out from right beside him, the black snake flinched.
Why was Geom Mujin unharmed?
Simple.
He’d been momentarily distracted and missed the chance to counterattack, but he hadn’t missed the chance to defend.
He spun his sword through the storm of slashing blades.
The sword barrier that spread up, down, left, right, front, and back around its caster protected his body without a single opening even as the area around him was reduced to rubble.
Even when a stray blade came flying in, it couldn’t pierce the windproof robe he wore.
In an instant, he’d closed to point-blank range and swung his sword.
"Hup!"
Whoosh—!
The upward slash climbed the black snake’s body like a soaring dragon.
The strike carried all the way to its head, cleaving the snake in two.
But the black snake’s eyes flashed, and the severed surfaces on both sides twitched and wriggled.
Fwoosh—!
Black tendrils erupted from the cut surfaces, lashing toward each other and stitching the wound back together.
"Kishaaah!"
Restored in an instant, the black snake roared and twisted its body.
Its dark coils swept across the area.
"Hup."
I stepped through a movement technique and dodged.
So that doesn’t work either.
I’d split it in half in one clean motion, but the snake had regenerated with almost no trouble.
I recalled the feel of cutting a snake.
It had felt less like slicing flesh than like cutting through mist.
Which made sense, since that body was made of the vampire’s blood fog to begin with.
So just chopping it up isn’t going to solve anything.
It was showing itself as if it were the real body, but this black snake was only an empty form of yin energy. That wasn’t the core itself.
The unknown sword that had blocked my sword force — that was the source of the yin energy, the snake’s true body.
I stared at the thick fog pooled beneath the black snake.
That thing’s real body was in there.
Fssshhh—!!
The snake’s tail scraped the ground and lashed sideways.
Just before it could hit, my slash grazed it first.
The tail was diced apart in a blink.
But it immediately grew back.
Then the black snake lifted the corners of its mouth, as if mocking me for an attack that couldn’t do a damn thing.
It charged straight at me.
Bang—!
When Geom Mujin dodged, the snake’s maw chased him at once.
Deciding my attacks weren’t a threat, it came on brutally.
Crash—! Boom-boom—!!
Trees toppled, rocks were ripped out of the earth, and the ground itself overturned.
That huge body was violence incarnate even in simple motion.
But even that violence couldn’t reach him as he evaded it with his movement technique and light-footwork.
Why the hell does a thing with no physical body even have brute force?
What, was this thing some kind of Logia user or what?
Watching the black snake turn Mount Mui into a complete mess in real time, I shook my head.
"Tsk, tsk. So slow. You really think you can eat me like that... huh!"
Landing on a boulder, I swung my sword at the black snake.
The black snake, which had been rushing toward me, lost its head.
"Seriously, why’d you turn into a worm? ...Oh, wait, were you a snake? Sorry, I couldn’t tell without a head."
Geom Mujin snickered, and the black snake, having regenerated its head in an instant, bit down and swallowed the boulder he stood on in one gulp.
Crunch—!
Geom Mujin had already evaded the attack, but the black snake immediately followed after him.
As it pursued him, the pitch-black sword thought:
His attacks can’t do anything to my true body.
He might be able to damage a few parts like the head or tail, but that was all.
He couldn’t reach the body I was protecting so carefully.
And yet, contrary to that thought, Geom Mujin could, at any moment, cut through the fog and the snake alike and reach the true body beyond.
Though if he does that, the one inside will definitely die.
Right now, the true body was parasitizing the vampire.
In a situation like this, the easy and fast answer was just to cut down parasite and host together.
If you tried to save the host, the difficulty shot straight up.
Normally I’d have picked the easy route, but not this time.
I’d already seen and heard enough, and I’d said it with my own mouth — I’d help.
If I start counting every little thing, I’ll have to give up my Great Swordmaster title on the spot.
To save the host, I first had to rip that sword away.
The reason I’d been evading and defending all this time was to do exactly that.
Geom Mujin’s right arm flickered with afterimages as he swung it.
The black snake’s face split apart in dozens of petals like a blooming flower.
"That face of yours is splitting open like an asshole. From now on, your name is Asshole."
Still not working?
It didn’t seem like the kind of thing with a high tolerance for pain.
Crack—
"Kishaaah!"
"......!!"
Then, as some scraping sound rang out from somewhere, the black snake let out a howl.
Along with it, the sword’s weapon screamed a soundless scream.
The natural qi inside the weapon was forcibly torn free as it transformed into yin energy and demonic energy.
I’d fed natural qi into the weapon not only to strengthen it, but for this very reason.
I’d been using it as a reserve pouch to store extra qi for emergencies.
The black snake gulped down the qi.
As the yin energy it possessed and the weapon’s demonic energy mixed more and more deeply, a change began.
Its body kept swelling, and a reddish hue started creeping into what had been an entirely black form.
Hellish, dark-red energy blazed in its eyes.
That alone wasn’t enough.
It needed obstacles that would interfere with the thing darting around like a flying squirrel.
With a strange gleam in its eyes, mist spread outward.
As the fog thickened further, something changed.
"Grrraaaah....!"
"Clack! Clack!"
They were the dead Taeho Sect disciples and wild beasts that had become corpses.
Drawn by the dense yin energy and demonic qi, they raised their dead bodies and began to gather.
After that vampire buffet show, Mount Mui was already packed with the dead — human and beast alike — so there were plenty of them.
Thud— thud thud—
And they weren’t the only dead things on the mountain.
Even the long-buried corpses of those who had died long ago clawed up through the ground at the call.
Their number surpassed the thralls the vampire had been using.
After vampires comes zombies, huh.
Surrounded by the writhing horde, Geom Mujin’s expression stayed flat.
This world had thrown out its roots ages ago, so nothing really shocked or surprised me anymore.
No matter how impressive zombies were, they weren’t as shocking as a tavern serving tonkatsu instead of braised pork belly, or selling Yamazaki instead of Damsoju.
I didn’t expect it to call up zombies, but whatever. Zombies are slow as hell, so dodging them should be—
"Gyaaaah!"
"Uwooooh!"
Then the dead rushed Geom Mujin.
But their speed wasn’t zombie speed.
Fapapapap—!
The fallen Taeho Sect corpses stepped through movement techniques.
They had been summoned precisely to catch Geom Mujin, who was fast on his feet.
There was no way they could move slowly.
Right before he was swallowed by the dead surging from every direction, leaving him nowhere to run.
Smirk.
The corners of Geom Mujin’s mouth rose.
Flash—!
His sword light exploded.
"!?"
The dead that had been about to pounce on him were instantly reduced to pieces of flesh and scattered, making the snake flinch.
"Gueeeh—"
"Gwooooh—"
Once more, sword light flashed and cut down the dead.
And it didn’t stop there — the number of flashes kept increasing.
Mujin Sword Style.
Wolhyangeom.
Three Days, Crescent Moon Forest.
The crescent moons that dazzled the eye tore the corpses’ bodies to shreds so thoroughly they would never rise again.
Fwoooosh—!!
When the sword drawing those crescents finally stopped, rotten blood and flesh soaked the area.
As the dead he had summoned in grand fashion were cut down to minced meat, a slash shot toward the startled snake.
Mujin Sword Style.
Somageom.
Immortal Flow Slash.
The slash cut into the snake’s body.
"Saaaaaa...!"
Stricken by the energy of Pasahyeonjeong, the snake writhed in pain.
"You’re dead now."
Seriously, stop eating anything and everything.
* * *
To put it bluntly, I’d been waiting for this moment.
For that snake to absorb more of the vampire’s power.
The best way to save a host from a parasite is to make the parasite come out on its own.
And for that, there was only one thing I could do.
Feed it a whole lot of the stuff it hates.
Even though yin itself is the crystallization of extreme negative energy, yin by itself isn’t evil.
Yin is one of the fundamental attributes that make up the world, so it doesn’t have any special elemental weakness, but there was still a method.
The thing it had parasitized right now had a very clear weakness.
It’s already fused with the vampire’s qi to some degree, but to make it really solid, I need to fuse it even more.
That was why I spent the whole fight provoking the snake.
I kept drawing it in with a tempting scent, acting like it could catch me but never quite getting there, and it moved exactly the way I wanted.
As a result, there was now a significant amount of demonic energy in it.
And once again, demonic energy is weak to the energy of Pasahyeonjeong.
Qi gathered around me and formed blades.
"Go."
One sword, two swords, three.
The tangeomgang that multiplied to eight swords were driven into the snake’s eight directions.
Wuuuuung—!!
The energies making up the sword force resonated with each other.
As the energy amplified, the sword force lengthened like iron bars.
The snake hurriedly tried to escape, but its overgrown body weighed it down.
The prison that would trap it was already complete.
Mujin Sword Style.
Somageom.
Demon Prison Sword Barrier.
The amplified energy of Pasahyeonjeong burst toward the snake like a beam.
"Kishaaah!!"
For the first time, experiencing a four-times-aligned elemental weakness, the snake let out a scream that sounded like it was being ripped apart.
Part of it was because of the demonic energy already mingled within it, but the real problem was elsewhere.
The host it had taken was a mass of demonic energy, making it catastrophically weak to Pasahyeonjeong.
It had chosen such a host and ended up creating a weakness that hadn’t existed before.
At this rate, all it could do was get helplessly roasted by Pasahyeonjeong.
Wuuung—!
The snake — no, the pitch-black sword’s true body — tried to separate from the host.
It had to cut off this weakness before things got any worse!
The cords tightly binding it to the weapon began to tear one by one.
"There you are."
Geom Mujin leaped into the Demon Prison Sword Barrier.
For just an instant, he had seen it clearly.
The cord connecting parasite and host, revealed as the two that had been fused so tightly were pulled apart.
Seeing Geom Mujin enter, the snake’s eyes caught fire.
"You, bas... tard... hu... man...!"
A voice thick with fury spilled from the snake’s mouth.
"Kuaaaaah!!"
The snake, ignoring the fact that its body was scattering apart, gathered every ounce of energy it had.
Then, from its maw, a compressed torrent of qi shot straight toward him.
Kwoooaaak—!!
Right before the torrent could sweep him away, Geom Mujin contracted his arm muscles and drew his sword back behind him.
Now that’s a bleeding technique loan.
Mujin Sword Style.
Heaven-Piercing Sword.
Falling Sun Pierces the Fang.
Bwooom—!!
He thrust the tip of his blade forward, and the sword wave split the torrent apart.
"W-wait...!"
Even after that, the sword wave did not lose momentum; it surged on and pierced the snake’s head.
As the avatar of yin suffered a fatal wound and scattered completely, I closed the distance at once.
".....!"
The pitch-black sword, now stripped of its avatar, controlled the remaining yin energy.
All manner of projectiles — blades, spikes, chains — came flying in, but...
Snick!
They were cut down without mercy by the sword wrapped in starlight.
Every time I swung the sword, starlight flashed and drew closer.
Deep in my consciousness, someone reached out a hand toward that starlight.
"Let’s end this already."
I can see it.
The higher-dimensional outer gods, sick of this dragged-out fight, peeling away one by one.
The sacred numbers diminishing.
That’s how long this damned battle had gone on.
Step—!
The pitch-black sword, still not fully detached from the vampire, made a final desperate move and seized control of the body.
The vampire’s body adopted the same stance as Geom Mujin and swung the pitch-black sword.
"Didn’t I tell you? You’re sloppy as hell!"
The pitch-black sword and Geom Mujin’s sword crossed.
Clang—! Snick—!
Then the pitch-black sword’s blade snapped, and at the same time, the cord binding the two was cut.
The fog began to fade away.
---