Chapter 295
Chapter 295
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 295
>Chapter Title: Divine Might (3)
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Was it that he had recalled a question he shouldn't have?
Now ascended to a mature realm, the side effects of the Soul-Stealing Heartless Sword, which had nearly vanished, began to boil over.
Demonic energy spread throughout his body, rampaging like a wild horse.
"Entertain me a bit more, you bastard!!"
Boom!!
Every time he blocked the curved sword swung by the mad believer, that rampage grew even fiercer.
Was it because he had been swallowed by waves of stray thoughts? Because his internal injuries were accumulating?
Even driven to the brink of life and death, Il-mok could no longer sink into that trance-like state as before.
Instead, memories from the past kept visiting him.
Memories of spreading a new religion called the Maitreya Cult in the Central Plains.
Memories of subjugating evildoers in the name of the Maitreya Cult.
And furthermore.
- How could another person's soul...
The moment those words muttered by the Blood Cult elder like a final testament resurfaced.
Il-mok finally realized.
"So that's how it was."
Why, even after gaining sufficient enlightenment in martial arts, he couldn't reach the Profound Realm.
Why he felt no aversion even after committing murder.
Before he knew it, he had been looking down on everything from Seo Ji-hoon's perspective.
He immersed himself in life as Il-mok, but the subject was always Seo Ji-hoon.
Yes. Just like manipulating a character in a game.
That's why he hated seeing those close to him die. It would be a shame if a companion character he'd journeyed with perished.
He felt nothing when killing someone. No one would feel aversion to slaying a villain in a game.
Perhaps it was a form of self-defense mechanism.
A wall he had unconsciously built to erase the repulsion from his first kill.
At this very moment.
Il-mok became aware of that wall for the first time.
Boom!!
Il-mok blocked the mad believer's curved sword once more, then vomited blood amid intense nausea.
"Urk."
It wasn't due to internal injuries from Demonic Deviation.
The moment he confronted the reality blocked by that wall, horrific sensations flooded in.
The screams and blood stench of the countless evildoers he had killed. The sensation of piercing their throats and hearts.
The instant he recognized he had killed over a hundred people, an indescribable revulsion wrapped around his entire body.
"Am I... a murderer?"
The mad believer's curved sword flew toward Il-mok's dazed face.
But that curved sword failed to take Il-mok's neck.
Clang!
Zafir, who had swatted away an incoming arrow from somewhere, glared with eyes filled with rage toward a certain direction.
"To dare interfere with this sacred duel!!"
Shouting thus, Zafir swung his curved sword repeatedly at the air, and the sword energy formed from his blade twisted grotesquely as it flew toward that spot.
Il-mok, still with a vacant gaze, followed the sword energy he had unleashed.
There stood Jeong-hyeon, who had shot the arrow at Zafir.
Just like back in his Demonic Path Academy days, when she had protected Il-mok from the leader of the mad believers.
Toward her, the sword energy Zafir had launched flew.
"......"
A woman with an impassive expression and cold demeanor stepped forward without a shout or battle cry to block it.
Boom!!
She blocked Zafir's sword energy repeatedly with chilling aura wrapped around her twin hands, but.
"Cough."
Overcoming the gap in their realms proved futile, and she eventually spat out blood with a light cough.
Yet even amid her internal injuries, Jin Ha-yeon boldly opened her mouth.
"Young Master, open your eyes."
Her gaze fixed straight on Il-mok. Just like when he had saved her from her inner demon.
She wasn't the only one. Jeong-hyeon, too, looked into Il-mok's eyes before aiming her bow at Zafir once more.
"Young Master!!"
Just as before, Ju Seo-yeon rushed forward as if ready to take a sword thrust in his place.
With eyes full of that same irreverent intent.
Only then did Il-mok look around.
Thanks to them, he had a brief moment to survey his surroundings.
'They're all... alive.'
The screams echoing from all directions had all been from the enemies.
Covered in wounds and drenched in blood, fighting desperately with fewer numbers as the severely injured fell back, but.
No one appeared to have died just yet.
Only then did Il-mok remember.
Why he had taken the lives of over a hundred people until now.
To protect them. And to execute those fiends who didn't treat fellow humans as humans.
- Do you think that's an excuse?
At that moment, the inner demon spoke in Il-mok's mind.
- You killed even those you could have just subdued?
The inner demon questioned why he hadn't adhered to the Buddhist precept of non-killing.
Il-mok offered no excuses to the inner demon's question.
The flimsy excuse that he had subconsciously treated this world like a game no longer held.
Instead, Il-mok spat out the blood rising in his throat once more.
"Kahk. Ptui. If they were the type to turn good if spared, I wouldn't have killed them."
- Who are you to judge others? Gained some power and think you're a god now?
To the inner demon's question, Il-mok grinned ferociously. His eyes already back to their usual listless gaze.
"Gods can go fuck themselves."
If he were a god, he wouldn't have to suffer like this.
As Il-mok muttered to himself repeatedly, Zafir furrowed his brow and looked at him.
"Tch. I've felt it before, but it seems you've gone mad."
Because of the intuition that this battle to become a great warrior would end in futility.
"Once I kill all you heretics, perhaps the divine one will grant me enlightenment."
As Zafir swung his curved sword at Il-mok again to complete the holy war.
Il-mok, observing the rampaging energy of the Soul-Stealing Heartless Sword, let out a chuckle.
"Might as well be for the best."
Zafir's eyes, about to furrow at his successive mutterings, soon filled with bewilderment.
"!?"
The moment their curved swords clashed against the mad heretic leader's blade, his sword began to scream.
Kiiiiiing!
His curved sword wailed as if about to explode, while the heretic leader's sword harbored a bizarre energy.
Not quite sword force, but something shaped like lightning.
It was Sword Lightning.
Il-mok had unleashed Sword Lightning by utilizing the demonic energy of the Soul-Stealing Heartless Sword, which had rampaged to its limit.
Just like when his blood energy had gone berserk in the past.
But it was different this time.
The madly rampaging demonic energy oddly obeyed his commands with docility. Unlike before, when he had barely held it in check.
Clang!
After several exchanges between the listless-faced Il-mok and Zafir with eyes brimming with conviction.
Zafir's eyes shook violently at his opponent's sudden change in skill and demeanor, but.
'Why impose such trials upon me!!'
He soon reverted to an expression free of doubt.
'Yes! This is the divine will! Overcome this trial and be reborn as a great warrior!'
But contrary to his resolute expression.
Clang!!
Zafir's curved sword, unable to withstand the Sword Lightning, shattered into pieces.
Whoosh!
Zafir hurled the half-remaining curved sword like a hidden weapon and dashed toward another fallen curved sword on the ground.
It belonged to one of his dead subordinates.
The moment Zafir gripped the ownerless curved sword and rose to continue the holy war.
Clang!!
A foreboding roar echoed, filling his vision with gray shards of light.
"Aaah. O divine one...."
Gazing ecstatically at the light shards bathing his body, divine baptism poured upon him for a brief moment as he wandered toward the divine in his blurring sight.
Thud.
The soulless flesh collapsed onto the blood-soaked desert sands.
Il-mok gazed briefly at the wretched corpse, then turned to survey his surroundings.
The mad believers attacking the Black Tiger Unit stared at Il-mok and Zafir's corpse with dazed expressions.
"This, this can't be."
"For Zafir to fall...."
The absurd part was that the Black Tiger Unit members stared at Il-mok with equally dazed expressions.
Click.
Il-mok, with an air of indifference, raised his Ascension Sword toward the sky.
Whiiiing.
The still-rampaging demonic energy of the Soul-Stealing Heartless Sword gathered toward the Ascension Sword.
Who am I?
As the inner demon posed the question again, Il-mok answered with a listless expression.
"Who else? Me."
He was simply himself.
Yes. He was Il-mok, and he was Seo Ji-hoon.
Just the order reversed.
No longer looking down on Il-mok as Seo Ji-hoon. He was simply living as Il-mok, bearing the memories of his past life as Seo Ji-hoon.
Because this place where he now lived was reality.
He was no longer someone living peacefully in modern times. He was one living in an era of barbarism, where law, morality, and norms held tenuous sway.
- Do you think that's an excuse?
Il-mok chuckled at the inner demon's question.
"Excuses can go fuck themselves."
At the same time, the energy gathered in the Ascension Sword split into hundreds of thin, thread-like sword energies.
True to its name, Heavenly Net Returns, Nothing Escapes, the net formed by the sword energies escaping the Ascension Sword spread in all directions.
A bizarre technique.
Il-mok's original Heavenly Net Sword lost control once the sword energies strayed about a zhang away, but not now.
He could distinctly feel each distant strand of sword energy.
Swish.
Moving sinuously like threads, they avoided the Black Tiger Unit members and flew precisely toward the mad believers.
And those touched by the net Il-mok had woven were not captured—they were shredded across their bodies.
Il-mok calmly watched the sight of dozens being torn apart by a single technique he unleashed.
No, he didn't need to watch; the sensation of each sword energy slicing flesh transmitted fully to him.
'Yes. This is reality.'
They were all killed by him. Just as in the past.
'All those deeds were mine.'
Even as chills ran through him from the horrifying sensation of cleaving flesh, raising every hair on his body, Il-mok did not withdraw his sword.
For someone else's sake, or to punish evil.
Such excuses were meaningless.
The sight of the Hu Hui Cult followers being swept away overlapped with days past.
The Black Dao groups and Blood Cult in the Central Plains. And the Hu Hui Cult followers he encountered on the way to the Western Regions.
This world was half lawless, where the strong massacred the weak.
Thus, he would swing his sword boldly henceforth.
For in this world where force was needed to achieve what he deemed right.
Thus, he would etch their deaths into his eyes.
To avoid becoming a monster who resolved everything with brute strength.
He would bear fully the deaths he had created until now—and those he would create ahead—and wield his sword.
No more pretending to be virtuous, making excuses, averting his eyes from reality.
The moment the final net Il-mok created pierced the last mad believer.
"Hoo."
Il-mok sheathed his Ascension Sword, sat on the ground, and assumed a cross-legged position.
He had recognized everything and resolved to accept it all fully. Even his own contradictions and ugliness.
Because all of it was Il-mok himself.
At that moment.
"The Heavenly Demon descends!!"
"Ten Thousand Demons pay homage!!"
The Heavenly Demon Divine Cult followers who had witnessed Il-mok's divine might prostrated on the ground without regard for order, seeking the divine.
But even that noisy clamor failed to reach Il-mok's ears.
Before long, he wandered in a trance-like state, with countless strands of natural qi surging toward him.
Watching that wondrous sight, Black Tiger Unit Leader Gu Yang-hyeok unwittingly turned to his deputy leader.
'They said he's the stock who will become our Divine Cult's god in the future. Perhaps we're witnessing a human ascending to divinity.'
As such sentiments arose in Gu Yang-hyeok, he belatedly noticed several women approaching Il-mok.
Jin Ha-yeon, Ju Seo-yeon, and Jeong-hyeon naturally took positions beside Il-mok to stand guard.
"Oh."
Only then did Gu Yang-hyeok realize what he needed to do.
For the leader of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult's Black Tiger Unit to stand idly praising amid such urgency.
"Begin treating the severely wounded! And those with even minor fitness, stand guard around the perimeter! Not even an ant pup shall disturb Young Master's enlightenment!"
At Gu Yang-hyeok's command, the Black Tiger Unit members who had been ceaselessly bowing toward Il-mok snapped to attention and moved with disciplined precision.