EP.2 — Mountains of Corpses, Seas of Blood (4)
Under the flickering glow of a blue emergency lamp sat the hideout. It was certainly a suitable place to conceal oneself, but it was far too cramped to accommodate six people at once—especially when three of them still hadn't woken and had to remain lying down, which only doubled the sense of confinement.
And so, Ash stepped outside.
Then he wandered alone through the ruined water purification facility. Every so often, through grotesquely twisted girders of steel, a view of Underland opened up before him—a sight that stood worlds apart from Sanctum's dazzling nightscape.
An underground city steeped in gloom. It possessed a strange, magnetic power, infecting even its onlookers with a melancholy they could not name.
How long had he been walking?
Suddenly, Ash stopped in his tracks and turned to look behind him.
There stood a man.
Zero, the tiger-masked ninja.
"The children?"
"They've regained consciousness. And... they recognized me."
So the kill switch had functioned properly after all.
"Good. I'm glad."
At Ash's low electronic voice, Zero stepped forward and bowed his head until it nearly touched the ground.
"Thank you, my lord."
A brief greeting. Yet within that brief greeting lay a great deal—joy at having recovered his siblings, gratitude toward the one who had helped him, and, binding it all together, an overwhelming sense of relief.
"Truly... thank you."
Zero held that position for a long while.
"Hm."
Watching him, Ash suddenly let out a low laugh.
"You really are curiously well-mannered."
"I beg your pardon?"
Ash withdrew his gaze and spoke.
"If you'd like, why don't we walk together for a while?"
Only then did Zero raise his head and move to Ash's side.
"I will follow you."
For a time, neither of them spoke. They simply wandered the ruins, occasionally letting their eyes rest on the glowing sprawl of Underland framed between the skeletal steel girders.
Then, at some point, Ash spoke.
"You gave me quite a start earlier—and that was even knowing, to some degree, what was coming."
"What do you mean?"
"The fact that you drove a blade into your own sibling's heart."
Zero took a moment to recall that instant.
"That too was thanks to you, my lord. Had you not shouted as you did, I might have gone on hesitating forever."
"I don't recall ever telling you to stab the heart."
"Heh. No, I suppose you didn't."
"It was a clean thrust. A sharp strike brimming with the essence of Unhaegaebyeok—the Parting of the Cloud Sea. Your center of gravity was stable as well."
Zero, who had no idea what Unhaegaebyeok meant, tilted his head for a moment—then quickly bowed.
"Thank you for the compli—"
"Which reminds me."
Ash stopped walking.
"Don't we still have something left to discuss, you and I?"
Zero stopped as well. And so the two swordsmen stood facing each other in silence.
"You mean... the matter of Kunlun Combat?"
Ash gave no answer. He simply regarded the other man with quiet stillness.
"...It may be a long story. Would that be all right?"
"As you can see, I have plenty of time these days. So do you, now that you've rescued all your siblings. Could there be a better moment for a long tale?"
"..."
After a moment's pause, Zero nodded.
"You speak the truth."
Then he removed the thing he had worn the entire time—the tiger mask.
Pssshhh...
As a sound like a gas mask's filter being replaced echoed through the air, the unmasked Zero lifted his head.
"Oh...?"
The face that emerged was strange in a way that the word "handsome" alone could not capture. There was the grayish-pale skin, pallor beyond mere whiteness, like the flesh of a corpse—and the blue veins that glimmered faintly through it.
But more than anything else, it was his dark crimson eyes that seized Ash's gaze. Burning, blood-red irises set against jet-black sclera.
The very same eyes he had seen in the Grotesques of the Outer, as they shrieked and thrashed, stripped of all reason.
"...Grotesque?"
At Ash's words, Zero smiled bitterly.
"I can't exactly say no."
"Could you... explain?"
"Of course. That's why I took the mask off."
Those dark crimson eyes turned toward Ash.
"My siblings and I—we are test subjects. Escapees from an Omnicell Biotech research laboratory."
He touched the tiger mask he had just removed.
"To put it a bit more precisely—we are cultured humans created by splicing human genes with those of a Grotesque. Yes. We were born in that laboratory."
"Good heavens..."
Ash let out a sigh at the shocking revelation.
"That's why we differ so greatly from pure humans. Take, for instance, the sort of thing that surprised you earlier?"
With that, Zero drew the blade at his hip slightly from its sheath, pressed a finger against it, and sliced it off in one swift motion.
His index finger dropped to the floor.
Showing no pain whatsoever—not so much as a flicker of expression—Zero extended the freshly mutilated hand before him.
"Honestly, this much is nothing."
From the severed cross-section, accompanied by an unsettling sound, muscle fibers were already twisting and weaving together, forming new skin and bone.
Barely a minute had passed, perhaps.
Zero's finger had restored itself to its original shape, as if nothing had ever happened.
For a moment, Ash was at a loss for words.
What a truly unknowable world this is.
Replacing the entire body with machinery was apparently not enough—now they were fusing Grotesques with humans. Ash had believed himself long since acclimated to this world, having seen and endured so much since arriving here, yet this was the first time he had witnessed anything like this.
Then, as a question brushed past his main core, Ash spoke.
"...You were born to a wretched fate, it seems. I doubt it held much that was kind to you."
"You're not wrong."
"And yet, I still fail to see what any of that has to do with the sword."
At those words, Zero shrugged.
"As I mentioned before—we are test subjects."
"I remember."
"Then, test subjects for what, exactly?"
"Naturally, for the hybridization of humans and Grotes—"
Zero pointed at himself.
"Didn't that already succeed?"
It was a fair point. Zero, standing right before him, was the living proof of it.
"...So you're saying there was some higher purpose."
"Yes."
Zero swept his long hair back and began, slowly, to speak.
"The purpose of our birth is the complete realization of Kunlun Combat."
"...!"
"Omnicell tried everything. They created cultured humans spliced with Grotesques, like me and my siblings. They turned entire bodies into machines, producing cyborgs whose very sense of self had grown faint. They even ran experiments on pure humans—ones without so much as a data-implant slot."
Despite his turmoil, Ash listened attentively as Zero continued.
"Perhaps thanks to the sacrifices of so many, Omnicell achieved its intended results. They succeeded in realizing Kunlun Combat—to a certain degree."
"Like you, you mean?"
"Yes. But the researchers always went around saying it wasn't enough. That this wasn't true Kunlun Combat. That the results it produced fell short of the values shown in the data."
Ash's optical sensors flared for an instant.
Because he had found something in Zero's words.
"The values shown in the data, you say. Then this Kunlun Combat you speak of was never Omnicell's own creation to begin with, was it?"
At that, Zero's eyes went wide. He had clearly never imagined that single remark would be caught in so brief an exchange.
"...Yes. That's correct. Kunlun Combat was not created by Omnicell. It is data from an ancient civilization, discovered in the Outer."
"The Outer...!"
Ash was staggered by the revelation.
"Can you tell me more?"
Seeing Ash press on so urgently, Zero shook his head with an apologetic look.
"I was only one of many test subjects, so I don't know all that much. As far as I know, Omnicell discovered ruins called 'Kunlun,' extracted the Nexus there, and from it obtained Kunlun Combat—a data package of tremendous destructive power."
At those words, Ash's teal optical sensors flickered rapidly.
And then he stood there in silence for a long, long time.
At some point, Ash lifted his head and addressed Zero.
"May I ask you a few questions?"
"Of course. Go ahead."
"Are there many others like you?"
Zero nodded.
"If you mean test subjects—yes, many. The laboratory I escaped from was absolutely enormous."
"Did they all learn this... Kunlun Combat of yours?"
"That's right. Though each of us learned different things. Kunlun Combat is divided into levels according to its difficulty."
"Levels, hmm. Then what level was the Cloud Dragon Thirteen Swords that you learned?"
Zero, unfamiliar with the term "Cloud Dragon Thirteen Swords," tilted his head briefly—then answered Ash's question in earnest.
"Level one."
"Level one... I see. Then, next question."
Ash's optical sensors blazed brighter than ever before.
"Have you ever heard the word naegong—internal cultivation?"
"Internal cultivation?"
Zero rolled his eyes this way and that, searching his memory, then shook his head.
"Never heard of it."
"...I see. So that's how it was."
Ash's main core spun into high gear, gathering together the fragments of scattered information, piece by piece.
First: Omnicell extracted a Nexus from the ancient ruins of Kunlun.
Second: From that Nexus, they obtained the martial arts of Kunlun, which had slumbered within it.
Third: But they knew nothing of internal cultivation. That is why they ran such monstrous experiments—to find some other power that could serve in its place, in order to fully reproduce Kunlun's martial arts.
His thoughts only deepened.
But how? How could Kunlun's martial arts exist in this world? Sealed away inside ruins—inside a Nexus Port, no less? That should be impossible...
Suddenly—
A memory brushed past his main core.
- Hehe. Don't be alarmed? Well, no, you can be a little alarmed, but don't be too alarmed!
- Ehehe! I've got a present for you!
A girl by the name of Nangrang. The memory was of her.
- Ta-da! It's Kunlun—the place you've been missing every single day, mister!
She had definitely said it.
A present, she'd said. For him.
'Could it be...?'
Ash was stunned.
Was the moment I first opened my eyes in this world... not, in fact, when I met that child?
His optical sensors flickered violently. It was a hypothesis he had never once considered.
And if it were true—then the ruins called "Kunlun," the ones Omnicell had discovered...
"My lord?"
At the sound of his name, Ash snapped back to his senses and lifted his head.
"Are you all right?"
"...I'm fine."
"I see. Then..."
Zero rolled his dark crimson eyes and looked straight at Ash.
"It's your turn to answer now."
"Answer?"
"Yes. Do you remember when we first met? Back then, you told me plainly: that I was the true master of that sword art."
"..."
"May I ask why you said it?"
To that question, Ash could not answer for a long while. All he could do was flicker his optical sensors rapidly, chewing over their conversation again and again.
Only after a long stretch of time did Ash finally lift his head.
"I can tell you. But you will find it hard to believe. I can hardly believe it myself."
"That doesn't matter."
"...Very well. Then hear me out."
The electronic voice that finally left Ash's lips was, just as his earlier warning had promised, almost impossible to believe.
"The ruins Omnicell discovered—in other words, Kunlun."
"Yes."
"I believe... I was its master."
"...I beg your pardon?"