Chapter 134
Chapter 134
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 134
Chapter Title: Doomsayer VI: Shin Noah
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“Huff! Uuurrghhh!”
The Sword Ghost charged at me.
But compared to when it had sliced through my neck in one go, its movements were no better than those of a sluggish old grandpa caterpillar.
Its footwork had changed—in a bad way. To avoid the landmines (statues) I’d planted all over the city, the Sword Ghost was forced into inefficient paths.
Of course, it was hard to imagine that Old Man Show, now degenerated into a Fallen One, still harbored the same staunch political ideology he’d had in life.
In fact, the statue I’d made the most of was Adele’s. In other words, busts of Old Man Show’s dear wife.
Right behind the statues of Marx and Luxemburg, more of the wife’s statues were peeking out.
About 90% of the reason the Sword Ghost hesitated to launch its statue-toppling rampage was surely because of those wife statues.
One might wonder, ‘Then weren’t the commie statues unnecessary?’ But posing such a question itself went against the anti-communist ideology of the Korean Peninsula.
Why would I pass up a legal chance to humiliate and mock that senile old coot? Especially when this was a rare honey-of-an-event after thousands of years?
As a regressor, you enjoy it when you can.
Among the wife statues, a few weren’t just busts but half-length portraits. I’d added the right arm to strike the ‘fuck-you’ pose.
Hundreds of middle fingers were boldly flipped up toward Old Man Show.
In this desolate city ruin, adding these exterior decorations finally made it worth sightseeing. This was beautification. This was urban aesthetics.
“……! ……!”
Overwhelmed by my meticulously prepared gift offensive, the Sword Ghost wailed once more. It was clearly moved by the sincerity of its old comrade.
I couldn’t understand the monster’s language well, but if translated to German, it was probably something like ‘danke’.
From behind me, Go Yo-ri murmured.
“How intriguing…….”
Leaving the fun-watching spectator back there, the exchange between our two swords—more precisely, my cane sword and the steel pipe—raged fiercely.
No matter that the opponent was Old Man Show at potential max level; with its path forced, it was a fight I could handle.
“Grrrraaah!”
Frustrated, the Sword Ghost kicked off the air and flew up.
It planned to avoid stepping on any statues at all!
But it knew one thing and not the other. That old coot had been on vacation too long and seemed to have lost his sense of who I, the Undertaker, really was.
“Look—at—me!”
Shrrrip!
Without hesitation, I tore off my top. At the sudden shirt-stripping, Go Yo-ri chuckled from behind, “Oh my, oh my.”
But my topless act wasn’t mere fan service. Nor was it a taunt to draw enemy aggro like some holy knight tank.
It was purely my artistic desire to show Old Man Show the portrait drawn on my underwear.
My underwear, white as drawing paper.
On it was a portrait of Lady Adele.
“……!”
Old Man Show froze mid-air, as if slammed by a car.
His fingers gripping the steel pipe trembled. From his dumbly gaping maw came only monster sounds like “Uuh—uuuh?”
From the old coot’s perspective, he’d just been ambushed by a masterpiece of the century, so of course he could only worship it.
Not to mention that I’d tattooed Lady Adele not just on my clothes, but on my forearms, hands, and even feet…!
The perfect superior upgrade to [Friend Shield], [Wife Shield], had descended here.
“Go ahead, attack me, old timer. I said attack! Where ya gonna hit? My neck? See the ADELE tattooed on my nape?”
“U-uuuuh……? Uuh, huuh……?”
“Cut me if you dare! You rotten old geezer!”
The Sword Ghost floundered, unable to advance or retreat. Even Old Man Show, who’d thrown friendship to the dogs and fled without a care, couldn’t budge before ‘love’.
Remember this. This is the proper way to deal with monsters.
That’s why Servants hide their true names so tightly. The moment you know their identity, their weakness is exposed, and once you grasp that weakness, a monster’s stiff neck turns into a chicken’s.
From then on, it was my turn all the way.
I charged, wrapping my body in an anti-Old-Show AT Field as tough as steel plate.
“I’ve wanted to punch your lights out ever since a thousand years ago!”
“Uuuurrrghhh!”
One strike. One strike. And another.
Each time I swung my cane sword Do-ha, the Sword Ghost scrambled to dodge.
Even amid that, Old Man Show’s dazed eyes scanned my skin. Probably checking for gaps to stab, avoiding the portraits and tattoos of Lady Adele.
But I didn’t commit the goddess’s mistake of leaving only the ankle as a safe zone while making a baby invincible.
Any Korean raised on early education in bleak tales like [Baby General Uturi] would avoid such bullshit even more.
“Huuuurrghhh……!”
In the end, Old Man Show found no weakness on my body. Unable to maintain air-walking, the Sword Ghost plummeted.
Its only remaining choice was to take hits from me.
And those beatings spared neither body nor mind. Because I wasn’t a mind-body dualist like Descartes, treating matter and mental separately.
“Emmett, what’s wrong with you?”
“……?!”
“I’m at the academy right now! Oh my god, have you been drinking? Why are you acting like a child? Huh? Wait, Emmett, there’s a weird noise from the sky!”
The lines spilling from my mouth.
They were a perfect copy-paste of the 30-second phone call Old Man Show once had with his wife.
Advanced plagiarism was indistinguishable from the original.
Not just the content, but I’d perfectly mimicked the voice too. By converting the vibrations of the sound waves into aura, I’d successfully recreated ‘Lady Adele’s voice’.
This strategy was born from inspiration during my battle with the Fallen version of the Saintess in the 107th cycle—the Executioner. Using a Fallen One’s technique against another Fallen One was truly a pinnacle of human intellect.
“My brother’s name is Maximilian! God! Emmett, what the hell are you saying?! I’m going crazy. Wait, hold on. We’ll talk about this in person later!”
“Uuuh, uuuh, uhuuuh……?”
Old Man Show fell helplessly to my ‘voice phishing’ technique.
Korean K-fraud attacks whittled away the German’s mental defenses in real time.
“Oh my, oh my…….”
Go Yo-ri, watching our fight—what was the expression? Her whole face was flushed with ecstasy.
Like the face you make when the killer scent from a subway bakery turns out to be genuinely delicious. Just looking made you feel full.
The battle dragged on for a day, two, three, four days.
In this bloodbath, I wasn’t just venting millennia-old stress on Old Man Show—that was only 85% of the goal.
The remaining 15% was, as I’d told Go Yo-ri, learning the ‘answer sheet’ by sight.
‘The monster before me is the real-life version of talents Old Man Show might have awakened.’
Huu—
I exhaled the opponent’s aura and steadied my breath. Then I stared straight at the Sword Ghost.
More trick than orthodoxy. More unorthodox than righteous. More Berserker than Saber.
It was a realm built on sinister demonic energy rather than pure qi, but still, the Sword Ghost was undeniably one possible pinnacle of the warrior ‘Emmett Schopenhauer’.
My gaze sharpened.
‘I need to remember as much as possible.’
The grip on the sword hilt.
Swing direction. Ratio and method of feints in attacks. Angle of loading weight onto the blade and speed of fluid deflection. Ways of utilizing aura in swordsmanship.
Sword techniques he might have mastered himself if he hadn’t deserted the game from the 23rd cycle onward.
‘Watch it, memorize it, pass it on.’
For the Old Man Show who would one day return.
That’s why I dragged out a battle I could’ve ended quicker, extending it as long as possible.
I introduced countless scenarios. How does it react to a left-side attack?
What if I feint a slash but fire invisible aura as a surprise? How does it defend?
Like this? In this case? Oh ho, even like this?
I hurled innumerable question marks at my foe.
“Uuuurrrghhhh!”
And my comrade answered with innumerable exclamation points.
If you hammer countless bent question marks into exclamation points of your own, that forges the path a warrior walks.
Even if a human falls into a monster, their blade doesn’t bend.
‘I can’t quite grasp the trick behind it.’
I’ll admit it honestly. As Old Man Show said, my martial talent is utter trash.
I’d hoped maybe, but my senses weren’t dramatically moved by the dazzling swordplay and footwork unfolding before me.
No sudden enlightenment moments common in wuxia, no realm breakthroughs, no such fortuitous encounters for me.
As a warrior, below mediocre.
‘Still, if I mimic the form perfectly and demonstrate, the old coot will figure out the hidden meaning himself.’
But as a supporter, top-tier talent.
No moment had made me more grateful for [Perfect Memory Ability] than now.
I was faithfully fulfilling the role given to me, a regressor in this world. Helping other comrades. Supporting them. Bringing them together.
For us mortals, faced with the absolute severance of time and death, I bridged that sheer cliff with stepping stones into a single line.
“Old timer. You’re not fighting me right now, nor trying to defeat me.”
Silver aura and night-sky blue aura clashed.
“Uuuuuh! Huuuh, huuuurrrghhh!”
“You’re fighting a slightly better version of your future self. Quite the coincidence, really. Isn’t every fight ultimately a duel with oneself?”
“……!”
“Let me make a prophecy. Someday, you’ll lose your life to your own blade.”
The four-day nonstop battle slowly drew to a close.
I saw it as Old Man Show’s current self sending a long letter to his future self.
In the past, people exchanged go game records by mail to play across distances.
So it wasn’t strange for two warriors to pass a martial arts manual across a bit of time.
“……. U, uuh…….”
The Sword Ghost was utterly exhausted.
Even a killing machine running solely on the principle of ‘love for his wife’ had limits.
Due to its innate design based on human flesh, the Sword Ghost’s muscles groaned under endless afterimage wounds, and its heart moaned from ceaseless fatigue.
Aura wasn’t infinite either.
In a battlefield rigged entirely to my advantage, Old Man Show’s engine overheated first.
Pop, pa-pop—pop—
The Sword Ghost’s once-grand aura, enough to turn noon into night sky, was now pathetic and gone.
Like a broken TV flickering noise screens sporadically, night-sky colors sputtered and died around Old Man Show’s shoulders.
If that monster was Old Man Show’s fall.
That sight was the monster’s downfall.
Yeah. Ironic coming from a regressor like me, but all events have an end.
It was time to wrap up burying that tiny time capsule in my head.
“Uuh, uuuh……. Huuuh…….”
As I stepped back, the Sword Ghost reflexively swung the steel pipe.
Wobble—
The strike was so feeble it only whooshed through empty air.
The Sword Ghost tried to pursue me. But its steps crumbled, and it fell. Its ankles were scored with dozens of wounds, like a tree stump botched by a clumsy lumberjack.
The Sword Ghost tried to crawl with its hands.
But clumsy aura control had shattered all its nails.
Splurt! With every flail, blood spurted from between the ten broken nails.
The Sword Ghost’s blood was pitch-black, reeking of briquettes.
A trail of ash stretched long.
“…….”
I raised Do-ha.
I intended to deliver the final blow to Old Man Show, to the remnants of Old Man Show, to his bad ending.
I’d long thought that if Old Man Show died, I alone was qualified to hold his funeral.
But I had to pause the downward swing.
Not feet, not arms, not hands, not fingers, not even nails—it crawled with whatever it had, but its destination wasn’t me, the one it had battled for four days.
“……Ah…….”
It was a bit further back.
“……, De……le……. Ah…….”
He was heading toward Go Yo-ri.