Episode 2
Darkness.
It was terrifying.
What I felt with such brutal clarity scared me.
Scritch, scritch, scritch-
Someone tore off my arm.
Someone cut off my leg.
Someone split open my stomach.
Someone dug out my eyes.
Someone carved out my chest.
Someone pulled out my spine.
Someone smashed my bones.
Someone dunked me in something hot.
Someone fed me poison.
Someone stuffed bugs into the holes in my face.
Someone. Someone. Someone...
Scritch, scritch, scritch-
It hurt so much.
I cried so much.
I really did scream, over and over.
They cut out my vocal cords because I was too loud.
Scritch, scritch, scritch-
Every day was hell.
I felt like I was losing my mind.
I wanted to die instead.
I wanted it to stop hurting.
Scritch, scritch, scritch-
No. Don't heal.
Stop. Let me pass out.
It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.
Scritch, scritch, scritch-
Shiver, shiver, shiver.
Cold. Cold. Cold. Cold.
Hungry. Hungry. Hungry.
Scritch- eeek-
“Found youuu.”
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
The scratching noise stopped.
What it had dug out from my head was stuffed into its mouth and chewed up with a sickening crunch.
Heehee. Hihihi.
“What’s this now?”
Another voice.
My body went rigid at the first human presence I’d felt in years.
“I came because I caught a whiff of my own kind, and it turns out there’s some beast brat here?”
The voice was bright and sharp.
It carried a warmth I’d never smelled before.
“Hey, you want me to get you out of there?”
At long last, a rescue I’d waited for came striding toward me.
-Year XX of drifting through another world. A cold winter. The day warmth finally arrived-
“Tch. My head...”
Why am I lying down?
I grabbed my head and pushed myself upright.
I felt horribly dizzy, and my stomach was lurching.
“Uwaaaek!”
After I vomited up blood, I felt a lot better.
My muddled senses were coming back into order, too.
“But why the hell does it reek so much of blood, huh?”
I clapped a hand over my nose at the foul stench, then jumped in surprise.
Without meaning to, I opened my eyes, because now I could see clearly.
“...Ah, fuck.”
Right.
I’d fixed my Blindness after drinking the elixir.
The events after that started coming back to me, little by little.
“Ah.”
“Ahhh.”
“Aaaagh!!”
My head was burning again.
Rage with nowhere to go began crawling up through me.
My whole body boiled with blood.
If only...
“If only I hadn’t known.”
Crackle-
“If only I hadn’t fixed my eyes.”
My hands clamped over my face and dug in, tearing at the skin.
Deep enough to bore through bone, to rip out my jaw.
Should I just blow my head off like this?
Would it get better if I just gave up thinking? Huh?
“Goreuk. Calm down, Master.”
A familiar voice.
My hands jerked to a stop.
Through the spreading blood, I saw my familiar padding toward me.
Narrow slitted eyes. Bright yellow pupils. Green skin and a small frame.
The familiar face of the familiar I’d spent decades scrapping and living with suddenly seemed full of color.
“G-Gobra.”
“I am not Bra. I am Gobra.”
The ugly face frowned in protest.
My familiar crossed his arms and gave me the same hopeless look he always did.
“So Gobra can hear Master now? Then you should start calming down. Gobra doesn’t know what has you so worked up, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to die, does it? Do you know how many days it’s been? Master is a vampire, not a dullahan. Stop trying to chuck off your head. It’s ugly.”
He jerked his chin toward my surroundings, as if telling me to take a look.
I blinked and turned my head.
“...”
The temple was gone.
Even the ground it had stood on had vanished without a trace.
All that was left was a massive crater, and I was standing in the middle of it.
Bits of torn flesh lay scattered around. The marks of self-harm. The whole place was a sea of blood.
“You went too far this time. Didn’t you finally open those eyes you wanted so badly? Why are you so angry?”
“...Eyes.”
“Goreuk. They’re like the little pebbles Gobra used to play with when he was young. Colorful and pretty.”
My familiar clicked his tongue as he walked closer.
He drew the greatsword from his back and planted it in front of me.
My unfamiliar face reflected in the transparent blade.
White hair with a silver sheen.
Pale skin smeared with blood.
Heterochromatic eyes, one a vivid scarlet and the other gold.
Those two hollow, flickering eyes looked strangely mysterious.
“This is me?”
“That is Master.”
I already knew what I looked like.
Like a mass of polygons, a shape outlined by lines inside deep darkness.
I only remembered the overall outline.
Seeing myself with all these varied colors was unfamiliar, but different in a good way.
And beautiful.
So beautiful it cooled the fever blazing through my head in an instant.
“...Damn, I’m pretty.”
“I agree. Master’s eyes have a very warm color, unlike Master.”
“I meant I’m pretty, not my eyes.”
“???”
“I did think it was strange when the Demon King started going after my virginity and left our master alone.”
At this level of beauty, I could hardly blame him.
“The fact that you’re talking nonsense means you’ve finally got your senses back. That’s a relief.”
“What was that, you bastard? Hey! I’m popular, you know!”
“It is a mystery to Gobra. Gobra does not know which part of Master makes people feel that way.”
“The head, chest, stomach, and ass, you idiot.”
“Goreuk. Then everyone must have gone blind.”
What was this eunuch goblin bastard saying?
My eyes narrowed on instinct.
The next instant, I clapped a hand over my face.
“Ack! My eyes!”
“What are you on about now?”
“I didn’t want to see goblin pores!”
“Goreuk? What are pores?”
“Your face, asshole!”
“Kuhk!?”
I kicked my familiar away and sent him flying out of sight.
Keeping my hands over my eyes, I slowly started to feel better.
Dammit.
Fixing Blindness so I can see is great, but I can’t control it well.
The culprit was obviously Super Senses.
This was a sense I’d never been able to use for my entire life after becoming like this.
There was no way even I could adapt all at once.
I’d have to pay close attention for a while.
“So, Master.”
“What.”
My familiar, now acting as if nothing had happened, came up beside me and asked, “Why did you make such a mess? What did you see when you opened your eyes?”
“...”
The question came straight at me, and I lost my voice.
My throat tightened more and more. A pressure different from thirst was squeezing my chest.
When I took my hands away from my face, I could see everything again.
Snow was falling in soft white flakes, landing on the blood-soaked red earth.
The goblin in his handsome white armor tilted his head and slung his greatsword back over his shoulder.
Within that landscape, alien things kept blinking in and out, demanding attention.
Status window. Achievement. Warning. Inventory. Shop.
And then.
“Return.”
“Goreuk?”
Returning to Earth.
Had I ever even imagined something like that was possible?
I’d been too busy trying to survive to spare myself such a luxury.
After the long war ended, after I somehow survived and could finally call myself strong...
decades had passed.
I’d lived so long that this world felt more like home than Earth did.
My memories from when I was human had blurred and spread thin like watercolor in water, and I could no longer call them up clearly.
But still.
Even so.
Long-buried feelings stirred.
A grief-struck longing rose up hard at the hope that had finally come before me.
Drip.
“M-Master. Why are you crying again?”
“...Hey. I think I can go back.”
“Goreuk. What do you mean? Go back where?”
“Earth.”
If I wasn’t completely insane already. No, that part was true, I was insane.
Still, if the return button in front of me wasn’t an illusion or a lie, then...
I could go back.
To Earth.
And home.
“Earth? You mean Master’s homeland?”
“Yeah. There.”
“Then why are you angry? If you can return home, shouldn’t you be happy?”
“I just found out too late...”
Yeah. Too late. Everything was too late. All of it.
“Goreuk. So, you’re not going back?”
“...”
“Go back.”
“What?”
Startled by the firm voice, I looked at my familiar.
The ugly face stared back with its usual sulky expression.
“Home is a good thing. Having a place to go back to is something to be grateful for.”
“Bra...”
“I am not Bra. I am Gobra.”
Those bright yellow eyes, like a goat’s, were shaded with a faint loneliness.
I thought I understood what he was thinking.
I understood why he was saying this, too.
“Besides, Master lost his job anyway, didn’t he? Latching onto that eccentric progenitor vampire and wasting time like this isn’t proper behavior. Aren’t you embarrassed at your age?”
My sympathy evaporated in an instant.
“Hey, was it my fault the Demon King’s army got disbanded? The Demon King said the war’s over and he doesn’t need us anymore! And a disciple can still lean on his master sometimes, you ass!”
“Only for a day or two. Sprawling around for years without doing anything productive is indeed shameful. The progenitor vampire’s face also seems to rot more every day when he looks at Master.”
“My master’s always looked like that when he looked at me.”
“Is that something to boast about?”
A pitiful look flew my way.
That shameless goblin bastard. There was no way he should be looking at his respected master like that.
“Goreuk. What Gobra wants to say is simple. There’s nothing left for Master to do here. So stop making a nuisance of yourself and go back home already.”
“...Go back and what, cause trouble?”
“Correct.”
“You cold-hearted bastard.”
“Kuhk!”
I kicked my familiar and got to my feet.
My head was still spinning and my stomach was still a mess, but the emotional whiplash that had been jerking around like a metronome had eased a lot.
I didn’t want to admit it, but my familiar really was useful in moments like this.
He’d probably kept talking to me like he had earlier, even while I was smashing my own head off a dozen times in this mess.
He knew full well I was a madwoman, after all.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been like this, so he must have handled it out of habit.
“You’re really going back now?”
My familiar had returned to his easygoing self and was buzzing around me as he asked the question.
I slowly nodded, heavy-headed.
I felt wronged enough to bleed tears over the years I’d lost, but separate from that, now that I knew I could return to Earth, I intended to go.
Like my familiar said, I really didn’t have anything left to do here.
And lately there’d been more than a few people looking at me like I was an eyesore.
Politics. I still didn’t know what the hell it was for.
Humans and demons alike. Different species, same damn behavior.
They wouldn’t even leave a vampire alone if she wanted to idle around and eat and sleep.
Honestly, coming all the way north in search of an elixir was just an excuse.
It had been more like a temporary escape ordered by my old survival instincts.
“Goreuk. Master’s homeland, huh? Gobra’s heart is pounding.”
“Well. Maybe you’ll come with me?”
“What does Master mean? Gobra is Master’s familiar, is he not?”
“I’m not sure either.”
Back when I crossed into the demon realm, I’d been able to summon him normally.
By that logic, if I shifted dimensions to Earth, I should still be able to call my familiar.
But this time, the premise itself was different.
Dimension shift mediated by the system.
That was the key point.
If I really returned to Earth, what would happen to me?
Would I go back in this body? Or would I return to the ordinary man I’d been before falling into this world? Would my memory reset?
What about time?
I’d spent more than a hundred years here.
Then how much time had passed on Earth?
Nothing was clear.
“Master. You’re unusually worried about something. Just do what you always do.”
“What I always do?”
“If you’ve decided to do something, just do it. Start swinging first. Worry is a luxury, and regret can come later.”
My familiar unexpectedly said something decent.
“Yeah. Since when have I ever gone around weighing every little thing?”
“Exactly. You’ve lived even more recklessly than an animal.”
“You little punk?”
I might be at the very end of the road, so I’ll let that slide once.
“Hey, Bra.”
“I am not Bra. I am Gobra.”
“You sure this will be okay?”
“Goreuk. Don’t get disgusting.”
“You’re really going to talk shit even when I’m worrying about you.”
What a disgusting little bastard.
If I returned and ended up as an ordinary human, this familiar would be staring down a dead-end extinction route.
This guy really wasn’t normal, either.
I drew one deep breath and turned back to the system text.
It was so chaotic I couldn’t even begin to sort it out.
Luckily, the return button was on the edge, so I could find it easily.
“I’m going.”
“Goreuk.”
[Would you like to return to Earth?]
[YES ■/ NO □]
I touched it lightly with my index finger.
Once I recognized the system’s existence, it seemed I could interfere with it.
Settlement has begun.
Achievement: Last One Standing achieved
Achievement: Transcendent Beyond Demons achieved
Achievement: Betrayer of Humanity achieved
Achievement: Kin-Eater achieved
Achievement: Rank 8 of the Demon Realm achieved
.
.
.
.
.
.
Achievement: Endless Survival achieved
Achievement: System Cripple achieved
Achievement: Overcame the Handicapped State achieved
Confirmed: a total of 215 achievements have been completed.
That is a lot more than I expected.
My already chaotic vision filled with translucent windows.
This user satisfies all conditions.
In accordance with the rules, the final bonus will be granted.
Upon return, all current User Information will be retained.
However, Karma Points are resources belonging to this world, so they will be reset.
“What?”
Those were the karma points I’d stacked up like crazy, weren’t they?
As I stared in disbelief, hundreds of millions of karma points evaporated into zero.
The processing is unbelievably fast.
Settlement complete.
Proceeding to the return process.
“Goreuk. Master. My body is disappearing.”
At my familiar’s words, I looked down at my hand.
I was fading little by little.
“Hey.”
“Goreuk?”
“Let’s go see.”
“Understood.”
From the system message, it sounded like I’d be returning in this body.
If that was the case, then I should be able to summon my familiar too.
I looked at the familiar standing there in silence, then closed my eyes.
Familiar darkness came for me.
How long had I been like that?
Ugh!
My senses suddenly flipped inside out.
It had only been a very short time, but the flood of information crashing into me so abruptly made me feel like my head would split open.
After a moment spent clutching my head against the pounding pain, I slowly opened my eyes.
“Huh?”
The sight before me made me let out a blank little sound.
Even in utter darkness, I could see a bleakness so stark it was as bright as broad daylight.
I stood in a cramped space and stared for a while before slowly walking forward.
I reached out my hand.
The rough, cold touch of iron pressed clearly into my palm.
“Fuck. This is giving me major PTSD.”
The hand gripping the bars went white.
I was trapped inside some kind of cage.
---