Laugh Until You Shatter

Having cried itself raw, the previous life's humanity threw itself from the top of the tower straight into the sea of slaughter energy. It ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sank, shattered into countless fragments as if smashed apart, melted away, and was absorbed.

Without any trouble, the humanity returned to the inner world and drove the sword of conscience into my insides, sending me a return signal.

"Hmm. So that's how it works. Want the rest of you to come out too?"

Judging purely by what I could feel, there were five humanities in the inner world. More precisely, five of them holding the sword called conscience that stabbed at my insides.

But only one of them actually volunteered to come out. Typical of my past life — too damn lazy for anything.

"Kyahahahaha! I'm out! I'm really out! Aha! Kyahahahahaha!!!"

"Oh, come on. Why."

The moment this humanity — laughing madly, unable to stop — settled into a body I'd fashioned from slaughter energy, smaller than my own, it vacuumed up the surrounding slaughter energy and spiritual power and grew in an instant, then opened its eyes.

Its appearance was taller and looked a bit older than the humanity that had only been disappointed and cried, but it was still unmistakably me.

As a cultivator, I couldn't reach that grown form myself, and the jealousy made me consider just chucking it into the sea ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of slaughter energy — but the humanities inside aimed their consciences at me, so I stopped and simply plugged my ears.

"How long are you planning to laugh?"

"As long as all the laughter I couldn't laugh until now! Ahahahahahaha!"

Both arms flung toward the sky, it laughed and laughed like a maniac. Tears and snot streamed down; spit and blood drooled from its mouth; coughs mixed into the laughter — and still it didn't stop, laughing with desperate intensity.

Until the temporary body finally couldn't hold and collapsed, that humanity poured out laughter as if the sole reason it had burst forth was to laugh.

Then it returned to the inner world, its presence shrinking as if fading away, and I let out a sigh.

These past-life humanities were filthy inconvenient, annoying, and nerve-grating things that operated by mortal standards. For someone who'd become a cultivator, they shouldn't be able to influence me at all — that would be normal.

But the reason I'd revived the humanities and put the weapon called conscience in their hands wasn't anything special. I just wanted to. Just because.

For no proper reason — just an inexplicable feeling.

Of course, if it hadn't been for Yeona's one remark, and if I hadn't gone all the way to the village I'd lived in, dug up the entire place where everyone had died by my hand, and brought it back to make a grave, I never could have revived the humanities that had already died.

A cultivator has no need to listen to a mortal's words, and a player almost never pays attention to background scenery they can't even interact with.

But when a mortal and a cultivator are essentially the same being sharing more than half their thoughts, and when a player will poke at even plain background if it becomes interactive — well, there's no player who wouldn't mess with an NPC set up as "another me," either.

"Hmm..."

In the inner world, molding a temporary body from slaughter energy was easy. I'd already copied the entire process of how [Disappointment] was created during the Eok-kka event, and shaping it through the sea of slaughter energy and the Golden Core only took a little time.

But trying the same thing in reality failed completely — the slaughter energy's tendency to scatter all at once seeking nearby living things meant I just wasted slaughter energy.

I could have done a clone technique. What a waste.

"Cheon Nan-cho, is there a technique similar to clone arts?"

"Even if there is one, Hee-ah, you probably couldn't use it anyway."

"I was just asking."

"You couldn't use a single one of the slaughter-based techniques I brought you either."

"That's just because those techniques were too weak."

I put slaughter energy into them and the techniques just shattered on their own or self-destructed — I had no idea what to do with that. They wouldn't even register in the skill window.

Most of the skill books Cheon Nan-cho brought back from prisoner exploration were only Magic or Rare grade anyway. Setting aside the Human-Slaughter Art, the basic slaughter skill technique — getting a special transformation skill from a random skill book through Cheon Nan-cho was, looking back, basically lottery-winning odds.

I had a feeling that if ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a normal cultivator learned it, they wouldn't withstand the power of the soft-body technique and their body would collapse from the inside — but thinking about it, it was probably just a skill book loaded with stat requirements and a bunch of learning restrictions.

But I obtained it by using a special consumable that rolls a random skill, so no problem!

"Come to think of it, I really got lucky."

"Heading out again?"

"Yeah. Gotta level up."

Accumulate slaughter energy, accumulate experience, raise my realm step by step, raise my level, push forward. I couldn't raise my realm through training alone, and I couldn't level up through hunting alone.

"No monsters."

Monsters with Golden Core-level power were absurdly scarce. Leveling up required more than taking down one or two, but there just weren't enough. Was this because of the reality patch too?

No, why?! The higher-level the map, the fewer the monsters! Does that make any sense?! What a garbage game!

That moment, my hair all stood on end as if screaming an ominous warning, and I urgently scanned my surroundings.

A dark purple portal leading to the Abyss opened right in front of me as if it had read my thoughts and been waiting. I immediately manifested a Law and seized the portal with a forcibly enlarged hand, crushing it in my grip.

Because of the power of the Law of Scale, the entrance to the Abyss had shrunk enough to fit in my grip. I tried to close it outright, but of course that was hopeless.

I could interfere with a Law that used mental power, but closing it was impossible. Even prodding it with slaughter energy and spiritual power didn't make it budge — I was inwardly impressed when—

The Abyss withdrew on its own. What was that supposed to mean? Planning to dump me into a max-level field again next time? The capybara-event bug wouldn't work a second time.

"Come to think of it, if I just hit level 400, I could barely scrape by in the Abyss."

The mobs at the Abyss entrance were between 400 and 450. Of course, since the vanilla max level was 500, the deeper you went into the Abyss, the more elite mobs from 480 to 500 poured out in packs.

In the end, I needed to level up fast.

"Seriously, there are no monsters..."

If I'd just accepted the season event and entered the secret realm back then, I could have swallowed every cultivator who'd come from all directions to compete, gulping down slaughter energy and experience in bulk. Looking back, it's a bit of a shame.

I couldn't because of the event Eok-kka, but who knows when the next season will even show up.

When Auto-Battle ended, the experience from the monster that died cursing me barely moved the exp bar by even 1%. It was enough to make me feel empty.

Sure, it doesn't make sense for high-realm monsters to swarm just because you changed maps in reality! Is that why people try to go to the upper servers?

If even I, who can level up with experience, take this long, of course ordinary cultivators who gain experience through pure training and consuming training resources would want to climb to the upper servers once they touch eternity.

"I just want to level up through training alone..."

But I can't, can I? Fuck.

I had to fill the slaughter energy. To aim for the next realm, and to gain experience. Even if it meant scraping up every neutral NPC and killing them all for exp.

"Fuck."

The humanities in the inner world stabbed their consciences wildly as if staging a riot. It hurt. My heart ached from the conscience poking and prodding, so I stopped.

Instant dungeons disappear once you clear them, so I wanted to find regular dungeons — but if I ran around the map looking for regular dungeons, the terrain scouting would finish and the regular dungeons would turn into instant dungeons.

There was no situation more fucked than this.

"Fucking hell."

Using the transformation skill, I crushed an instant dungeon under a single giant footstep, and as the waterwheel above my head spun charged with slaughter energy, I put more force into my foot and smashed the resisting barrier to pieces entirely. Then I scattered Chopsticks and wiped out every remaining monster.

Because I'd done it with manual combat instead of Auto-Battle, the experience rose a bit more meaningfully — but it was still basically the same scrap of exp.

Ignoring the background NPCs' sobs and screams, I deactivated the transformation skill and headed for another instant dungeon marked on the minimap.

Instant dungeons were one-time-use to begin with, dropped no items, and only let you farm experience — places you'd normally ignore and walk past. But with this few monsters on the map, I had to scrape them clean somehow. What else was I supposed to do?