Chapter 30
Murim was not peaceful today either.
Geom Mujin, keeping watch beside the child sleeping under an IV drip through a catheter, idly fiddled with something in his hands.
"Hmmm..."
It was the pitch-black sword with the blade gone.
As befitted the mastermind behind this whole Mount Mui Goema incident, it proudly flaunted its jet-black color.
"Sneaky little parasite, and black as sin too."
...said the jet-black-haired black-haired guy while roasting the pitch-black sword.
"Seriously, is it broken?"
I stood up and examined the sword.
I’d brought it with me because I didn’t want to leave it on Mount Mui and have someone pick it up, only to end up possessed or whatever, but it stayed stubbornly silent.
It had spoken to me at the tail end of the battle, so it seemed to have a will of its own.
"Hey, I know you’re awake. Say something, will you?"
...
"Come out! Shadowy little bastard!"
...
"Blizzard! Cold Beam! Wake up!"
...
[The Pitch-Black Sword remained silent.]
[It appears to be dead.]
Ever since its blade got cut off by me, it had been in this condition.
Not only had it stopped talking, I couldn’t even feel that obnoxious dark aura anymore.
I’d even tried pumping qi into it just in case, but nothing changed.
One was asleep from the aftereffects, and one was apparently dead and mute.
The only two who could answer my questions had both turned into total stone walls.
"Ugh..."
I sighed and got up from the chair.
Then I assumed a sword stance.
"Hup!"
Geom Mujin’s arms and legs, his whole body, danced with the sword.
I hadn’t deliberately slowed my speed or held back my strength, but the sword dance didn’t snag on anything in the room.
Like a flowing river, like a gentle breeze, the blade moved forward and drew its melody through the air.
No wind pressure was generated either, and not even a single scrap of paper lying nearby was disturbed.
And then, with perfect control of pace and force, the sword dance came to a stop.
Looking at the pitch-black sword in his right hand, Geom Mujin muttered under his breath, "…Impressive."
It was hard to believe that had come from the mouth of someone who’d been trash-talking it only minutes ago.
But after swinging it just now, I could tell the pitch-black sword was superb in its own right: the balance, the feel of the hilt, the sharpness of the blade, the overall craftsmanship of the weapon itself. All excellent.
Even with more than half the blade missing, someone at my level could still judge a sword properly.
At the very least, this belonged in the ranks of a divine sword.
If the blade had been intact, it would have been even better.
I’d only meant to blow off some steam, but I’d found an unexpected treasure.
For a moment I felt pleased, then frowned and studied the pitch-black sword again.
"But did a sword like this even exist in the original story?"
The original My Murim Academy, being a game, featured a huge variety of equipment.
Heavenly Abyss Sword, Moon King Sword, Azure Steel Sword, Imperial Heaven Sword, the Ouya series, scheduled maintenance, and so on—there were especially a lot of swords.
The pitch-black sword was different in style from the Han sword, the sort of blade Murim folks usually called a sword.
Looking at the length of the hilt, the guard, and the wide breadth of the blade, it was closer to a greatsword than a Han sword.
Its complete form must have been a rather large weapon indeed.
I didn’t remember every piece of equipment, but there was no way I’d forget a sword with such distinctive traits.
"Which means it never appeared in the original."
There were limits to how much I could know about a thing like that.
Rather than keep worrying over it alone, it’d be better to ask someone who actually knew their stuff in this field.
"Hmm..."
I swallowed an uneasy groan.
One place immediately came to mind.
Oddly enough, the place in Murim most knowledgeable about weapons and armaments was the Tang Family of Sichuan.
Maybe they’d know something about this sword, but...
"Of all places, it had to be the Tang Family."
The Tang Family of Sichuan was one of the groups that hated me.
-You bastard! One day, as you fall into the cauldron of hell, remember the wrath of the Tang Family!
-The Tang Family will never, ever forget today!
I remembered the grudge I’d formed with them during the storm-and-stress phase that had come after my first world and then again in this one.
Well, to be fair, that was a time when I’d been fully at the mercy of the hormones in my new body.
"Ugh..."
If I went there just to ask a question, I could already picture the future where poison and hidden needles rained down on me like acid rain.
I’d suffered plenty because of those poison-using bastards back then.
Things had quieted down for various reasons, but those narrow-minded little weaklings were probably still falling asleep every night imagining themselves beating me up before bed.
"I’ll leave it to my future self."
He’d figure it out somehow.
I tucked the sword into my waist.
For some reason I had the strange feeling it should be carried across my back instead of at my hip, but why bother with a blade whose edge was already ruined?
"Ugh..."
"!"
Then a groan came from the bed.
Geom Mujin moved toward it.
"Mm...mngh..."
The child, who had been asleep for days, showed a change in expression.
His brow twitched, and his lips moved, a sign that he would wake soon.
"Sword Senior, it’s time to change the IV..."
"Shh!"
At that moment, when Heo Injun entered the room, I signaled him to be quiet.
"He’s waking up."
"!?"
At first he’d been wary of the child because he’d known him to be a Goema, but curiosity got the better of him and he cautiously approached Geom Mujin.
Rustle—
The child’s eyes opened.
* * *
"....."
The child stared blankly up at the ceiling.
It felt like it had been ages since he’d last seen a ceiling.
"A strange ceiling, huh?"
At the unfamiliar but not entirely unfamiliar voice coming from beside him, the child’s ears perked up.
"Ugh..."
He instinctively tried to turn his head, but failed because his body wouldn’t move.
"Ah, right. I’d tapped your pressure points."
Geom Mujin gathered qi into his index finger and lightly tapped the child’s neck.
"Sword Senior?"
Heo Injun looked at him with an expression full of many, many feelings.
No, this was just a precaution in case I wasn’t around, so it was fine, right?
The child’s expression was murky, with dark circles so deep it looked like he’d spent his first night in the barracks counting the days until discharge, but there was still a trace of reason in those eyes.
The mind-controlling sword had already been dealt with by the Great Swordmaster, so there wouldn’t be a repeat of Mount Mui. Relax, people.
With his freedom restored, the child turned his head and looked up at him.
"......"
He stared blankly at Geom Mujin’s face.
"What, is another black-haired person that interesting?"
Geom Mujin asked, fiddling with his hair under that stare.
"......"
He really was another black-haired person, so maybe it was a little strange, but that wasn’t why the child was looking at him.
Gawk—
"Why are you staring so hard? Oh. You want me to help you sit up?"
As he wondered why the kid was looking at him so intently, Geom Mujin suddenly had a hunch and asked.
The child’s pupils trembled ever so slightly. Apparently that had been the right answer.
"You could’ve just asked."
Geom Mujin muttered as he supported the child’s back and helped him sit up.
But for all the years he’d lived, the idea of asking another person for something was unimaginable to the child.
If he asked for help, if he even made a weak sound, he’d be discarded immediately.
It was only because the other person was Geom Mujin that he could send that pleading look at all, and even then his heart pounded so hard it felt like it might burst from nerves.
"Do you remember me?"
"......"
The child nodded.
Not completely, only in parts, but he did remember.
He remembered the man who had cut down the black snake and the sword with a sword of red starlight and saved him.
He remembered the hand that had taken his own.
"Then can you tell me your story?"
At the topic that made him recall the past, the child’s body began to tremble.
The dark, cold place, the pain that had pressed down on him—
Tap.
At that moment, Geom Mujin’s hand settled onto the child’s trembling head.
It was different from the way adults had struck his head before.
At that unfamiliar but warm feeling, the child’s eyes widened a little.
"It’s okay."
Looking him in the eye, Geom Mujin said, "There’s nothing here that’ll hurt you. And if there is, I’ll cut it down for you."
He flashed a grin as he casually drew the pitch-black sword a little.
It was the Great Swordmaster Smile, a guaranteed way to make people feel safe, with a success rate of about 3 percent.
"Like this guy."
"....."
The sword that had once controlled him now hung forlornly at Geom Mujin’s waist.
Why was it that until now, just remembering what had happened had made him afraid, but now he felt like he could do it?
It didn’t matter if no one else could understand him. He could speak to that man.
"I, I..."
The child spoke in a small, trembling voice.
* * *
Perhaps because he’d escaped the bliss of blood-drinking and the shackles of the sword, the child was very compliant.
No, more precisely, it was closer to the long-buried habit of obedience surfacing on instinct.
"......"
I sensed that, but I didn’t interrupt him and listened in silence.
"I was...locked in a dark...prison...."
"There were...lots of...other children...besides me..."
"The adults always...made us...train in martial arts...and experimented on us."
".....And...a lot of us died..."
Slowly, haltingly, the child told me what he’d been through all this time.
Heo Injun fell silent at the horrific story, and I was able to confirm one thing from it.
As I thought, this kid was a manufactured Goema.
At first I’d thought he was just some leftover demonic cultivator who’d been consumed by a heart demon and turned into a Goema.
But after seeing the Goema...the child, I changed my mind.
This wasn’t a naturally born Goema.
No matter how you looked at it, there was no way someone that young would become one.
However fast some demonic arts were, there just wasn’t enough time physically for a child his age to accumulate the kind of mastery needed to turn into a Goema.
Granted, if I were being generous, maybe he had really been some prodigy demon-in-training who’d been drilled hard in demonic arts from an early age and turned into a Goema that way.
But once the pitch-black sword entered the picture, the story changed.
He just happened to find a sword like this after becoming a Goema?
No matter how unpredictable a fortuitous encounter could be, that was just plain ridiculous.
"Then what happened to this sword?"
"That sword...when I escaped...it called to me...told me to take it...."
So it really did have some kind of will.
I glanced sidelong at the sword, still silent after being thoroughly wrecked by me.
"Without meaning to...I took the sword...because it told me to...After that...I can’t remember...."
"So it’s fuzzy?"
Nod.
"...I do remember being chased by the adults...on the mountain, though...."
Geom Mujin looked down at the child.
He isn’t lying.
From what I could tell through his qi sense, the child’s heartbeat was steady.
Which meant he’d told the truth from beginning to end.
Unless he’d undergone the advanced training unique to assassins, where they could control their heartbeat, sweat, and tears at will.
I recalled what had happened on Mount Mui.
The Taeho sect members and laborers who’d been turned into ghouls by blood-drinking.
The thralls who had wandered through the dark at their master’s command.
Quite a few people had died or been hurt.
And right before my eyes now, the child had bowed his head because of all that.
It was too cruel a story to tell a child who’d already lived a life stained by abuse and only just managed to crawl out of the dark.
There was no need to burden the child, whose past still clung to him like a heavy yoke, with more memories just yet.
Someday he may remember on his own, but at least today won’t be that day.
"Yeah. Thanks for telling me."
Geom Mujin smiled bitterly and patted the child on the head.
To be honest, saving the child had been a bust.
Maybe because he’d been manipulated by the sword, he couldn’t remember at all where he’d been kept.
The adults who’d experimented on the children.
I had my suspicions, but it would’ve been better to confirm it directly.
I swallowed the sigh of frustration rising in my chest.
No point letting that show to the kid.
"......"
The child, his hair now a tangled mess, twitched his fingers.
Thank you.
At those words—words I’d never heard before—my chest went strangely ticklish.
It was a different feeling from lying asleep in a prison while centipedes and spiders crawled across my arms and legs.
"Come to think of it, we still haven’t even introduced ourselves properly."
Geom Mujin said, deliberately lightening the mood.
"The one who looks like he’d be popular with the female patients here is Heo Injun, and I’m Geom Mujin, the guy who looks like he drags storms and raw charisma wherever he goes. What’s your name?"
"......"
Heo Injun’s name didn’t register in his ears.
In the child’s ears, only one name rang clearly.
Geom Mujin.
Geom Mujin.
Geom Mujin.
The child looked at his face once, then silently mouthed the name to himself again before opening his lips.
"Bitch."
"What?"
"Huh?"
Swishhhh—
At the sudden curse, the room was filled with nothing but silence.
"Slut, barbarian bitch, whore, bitch, damned bastard."
Words that should never have come out of a child’s mouth came spilling out in a row.
"The adults...called me those things...Pick whichever one you like."
......
As Geom Mujin and Heo Injun reeled from the dizzying barrage of language—
"Wait, hold on. Were you a girl?"
Geom Mujin blinked in utter confusion.