Chapter 67. Heavenly Demon (2)
Chapter 67. Heavenly Demon (2)
The Pharmacist quietly closed her eyes.
A moment later, she spoke.
"...If it weren't for Death King, I'd still be in the back alleys of the slums. All my equipment stolen... Honestly, I can't even imagine what would have happened to me."
The Pharmacist slowly opened her eyes.
Beyond her glasses, her gaze was far clearer than before.
"Yes, I want to repay what Death King has done for me. I'll devote myself solely to making the cure without thinking about anything else. ...But when I get absorbed in my work, I really don't see what's around me. I don't even observe basic courtesy. I'll probably act very insolently. Even so..."
"Even so, it doesn't matter."
I nodded.
"Please show me what you can do."
This was no time to worry about trivial courtesies.
I only needed the future Alchemy Ministry Head.
"...Understood."
The Pharmacist adjusted her glasses.
She turned her head and looked at Medicine King.
"Old man."
"Huh? What is it?"
"From now on, support me with everything you've got."
Medicine King frowned. The old man's wrinkles were as thick as his stubbornness.
"Support? Suppooort? The nerve of you. You brat—elders even drink cold water first! What gives some green youngster the right to tell Medicine King to play support..."
"Open skill card."
"...Huh?"
Cards rose smoothly from the Pharmacist's hand.
One golden card. Three silver cards.
The Pharmacist had mastered four skills that an ordinary hunter would struggle to obtain even one of—and every one of them was B-rank or higher.
Medicine King's eyes went wide.
"Wh-what is this. Are you trying to show off your skills to me? Hmph. Young people these days think skills are everything, and that's the problem. True skill, of course, is..."
The Pharmacist spoke.
"You may look."
"What?"
"I said you may look at what my skills are."
Medicine King was so flustered he couldn't react right away.
That was only natural. To a hunter, a skill was a secret weapon, know-how that must never be revealed to others. Revealing your skills was no different from confessing not only your strengths but every last one of your weaknesses.
In a word, folly. A stupid and foolish act.
"Or shall I just show you directly?"
But the Pharmacist was unhesitating.
"This skill is [Mobile Hospital]."
She flipped the card over and showed it to Medicine King herself.
"Everything from blood tests to brainwave scans is possible in real time. I can also take out and use medicinal ingredients I've stored in advance. However, there's a 2% chance of misdiagnosis. This is [Life Diagnostic Report]. I can determine a patient's condition down to the genetic level. I combine the two skills to minimize the probability of misdiagnosis..."
"W-wait! Wait a moment!"
Medicine King belatedly got a grip.
"You little—! Why are you showing me your skills! What if I blab about this to the Alchemy Ministry or your fellow pharmacists!"
"It's fine. I promised not to worry about such idle thoughts."
The Pharmacist said.
"You may reveal them if you wish. But until we finish making the cure this time, support me properly."
"No, I mean, why me..."
"Because I need you, old man, if we are going to shave even one day off the development time."
"..."
"You can't stand me, can you?"
The Pharmacist looked at Medicine King. Her gaze was calm to the point of coldness. She was always a flustered Pharmacist, but now her face was completely expressionless.
"You're angry that a young brat who doesn't know her place is mouthing off, aren't you? It must annoy you that someone like me has talent. And that I have far more years left than you—that people will keep respecting me long after you're gone—must drive you crazy, doesn't it?"
"..."
People often compare human voices to birds. But I guarantee the Pharmacist's voice was something no beast could imitate. If I had to say... Yes. It was a voice that called to mind insects.
A murmur like fire ants sizzling.
"If you help me with everything you have this time."
The Pharmacist adjusted her glasses.
"All the medicine formulas I've made so far. I'll give them all to you. I won't go around saying they're mine. Take them. Use them. Tell people you invented them..."
At that moment, the Pharmacist's glasses slipped and fell to the floor.
The old man had slapped her cheek.
"..."
The Pharmacist picked up her glasses. And she silently wiped the lenses with her sleeve. A red handprint remained on her left cheek. The Pharmacist put her glasses back on, then quietly looked at the old man.
The old man was trembling with fury.
"Insolent wretch..."
"I'll analyze the zombie virus."
"You'll learn that there is a heaven above heaven."
"Old man, you just do the things I tell you to do."
"The day will surely come when your pride is crushed and reeks of rot."
"I'll write down what we need and give you the list."
"Someday, you too."
"At that time, old man."
The old man and the woman spoke at the same time.
"Will meet someone better than you."
"Find it and bring it to me."
And the two hunters fell silent.
With the corpse of the Wudang Sect Leader between them, the Pharmacist sat on the left and Medicine King on the right. When the Pharmacist muttered something, Medicine King wrote it down. A colorless atmosphere. The two of them, now closer to a still life than a portrait, exchanged only businesslike words.
"Death King, I'm sorry, but please leave."
The Pharmacist muttered as she pressed a scalpel to the corpse's head.
"Your breathing is distracting me. It's very, very much in the way."
"On your way out, go catch six more zombies."
Medicine King peered into the corpse's dark mouth. He pinched the zombie's tongue, stained purple and black, with forceps.
"I need more samples. A child, a young one, an old one. Each of different sexes. And if there are medicinal ingredients I say I need, go obtain them."
I nodded.
"Leave it to me."
From that day on.
We entered a state of wartime readiness.
Even time to eat felt precious. Washing one's body was a luxury. Even though there was an open-air hot spring right next to us, the Pharmacist and Medicine King did not bathe. Night or day, the two hunters nibbled at Fasting Pills and researched only the zombies.
"Oh-ho... The atmosphere has changed considerably."
Heavenly Demon looked at our group as if puzzled.
"Are you trying to attain some enlightenment? The young ones are diligent indeed."
"Say, are you not going to cook any more of that clam soup or dori-pal risotto?"
The Murim Alliance Master sidled up to Medicine King and wheedled.
"It was truly skill that would make even the imperial court's chefs weep. If only the world were intact, I would appoint you head chef of the Great Namgung Clan."
"I'm busy, so get lost."
Medicine King answered without even lifting his head. He simply reached into his subspace pouch and tossed a water bottle with a flick.
"If you're hungry, fill your belly with water at least."
"Hmph."
Was he truly that disappointed at being unable to taste Medicine King's cooking? The Murim Alliance Master clicked his tongue. Even so, he caught the Bling H2O that Medicine King threw and drank it well enough.
"Old man, stop bothering busy people and let's go."
"Fine, fine. Good grief, my body hasn't been listening to me lately. It's a struggle."
The Murim Alliance Master grumbled as if exhausted.
"How many of those jiangshi bastards have scattered today, I wonder..."
"Even if you go far, will you go a thousand li? Stop your yapping and come out."
"Fine."
The Murim Alliance Master grumbled and left the cave together with Heavenly Demon.
They were probably going to gather zombies again today, just like yesterday. To pass the 991st day of the Orthodox-Demonic War.
A day passed.
The day of the world's destruction drew one day closer.
Another day passed.
A day.
Again, a day.
Countdown.
Days spent merely waiting for destruction.
A world that was nothing more than a music box that had not yet stopped.
"Hmm."
One week.
Exactly one week had passed since we fell into the Apocalypse.
That day, Heavenly Demon looked up at the cave ceiling.
"...It seems we cannot go outside today."
A blizzard was raging in the world. Snow blew and blew again in the wind, so that up and down, sky and earth, could not be distinguished.
The world was nothing but a dark snowfield.
I learned for the first time then that white could be dark.
"Well, there are days like this."
Heavenly Demon shrugged her shoulders as if it were no big deal.
"Rather, the clear weather these past few days was a stroke of luck. At its worst, the blizzard raged for more than 30 days. With no sunlight, I couldn't move a single step."
"Then the jiangshi will keep moving."
I said.
"Is that okay? If they go too far, you can't retrieve the jiangshi."
"At such times, there is no helping it. We lose them."
Heavenly Demon sighed.
"Three years ago, our cult still had a thousand fighters. The orthodox whelps that old man brought along numbered about the same. But as time passed, some jiangshi wandered so far away that we could no longer find them at all."
That made sense.
The missing corpses. No, not missing—lost corpses. Every time a blizzard raged from the sky, Heavenly Demon and the Murim Alliance Master must have lost a few corpses at a time.
"That must be the most frightening thing."
"Hm?"
"When you wake up and go out to the snowfield, and a jiangshi that was there yesterday has vanished somewhere."
"..."
Heavenly Demon quietly looked at me.
"Do you think I would feel something like fear?"
The woman's eyes were ink-black.
Her hair, too. Even the martial robes she wore.
Her appearance, consistent in nothing but black, seemed as though she were desperately resisting this world that had become a pure white snowfield.
"Yes, I think you would."
"Indeed, the world has been turned upside down. Normally, anyone who spouted that sort of nonsense would not still have an intact head. Child of the frontier, you should count yourself fortunate that the world has ended."
"The Heavenly Demon and the Alliance Master are both masters. Your understanding of martial arts is so profound that I almost feel rude comparing myself to either of you."
I quietly turned my gaze.
The Murim Alliance Master was asleep by the hot spring.
"But no matter how great a master you are, your internal energy is not infinite."
"What are you trying to say."
"When does your internal energy run out?"
She flinched.
"You're blocking the acupoints at the back of your neck with internal energy, aren't you? You said your heartbeat, your breathing, the movement of your limbs—all of it is handled by internal energy."
Hadn't the guardian spirit said it was no different from using Sword Control around the clock?
I shook my head.
"No matter how much internal energy you possess, you cannot continue such a monstrous feat forever."
"..."
"I'll ask again. When does your internal energy run out, Heavenly Demon?"
The woman had said not long ago.
「All people die someday.」
Those words had resonance. The resonance of one who had attained enlightenment.
There is only one way for a human to realize something.
They had no choice but to experience it directly.
"...Truly."
Heavenly Demon groaned.
"Truly, a quick-witted child."
"There aren't many days left, are there?"
"...I shall correct myself slightly. A damnably quick-witted child."
This world.
How does [Chronicles of the Heavenly Demon] reach its destruction?
When you thought about it, it was a surprisingly simple problem.
"When your internal energy runs out, it becomes impossible for the two of you to move your bodies."
"Yes."
Heavenly Demon looked up at the sky.
Through the hole in the cave ceiling, the blizzard vomited by the sky was raging.
"First, the tips of the feet and the tips of the hands will be abandoned. Then the calves and wrists. The knees. The shoulders. The waist. One by one, internal energy will no longer circulate, and the body that internal energy cannot permeate will finally rot."
Literally necrosis.
Like a building whose operations shut down one by one when the fuel runs out.
At some point, the two of them would become unable to move.
"The heart, the lungs."
The woman touched the chest area of her worn martial robes.
"The upper dantian."
And she tapped the crown of her own head.
"All parts rot except those three. No, I will leave the other parts to rot."
"...You already knew."
"That bald Shaolin monk lasted a year with me."
Heavenly Demon smiled bitterly.
"As if to prove he was a monk through and through, the fellow passed away sitting in the lotus position. At the very end, hmm. Aside from his face, he did not look much different from a jiangshi. His whole body had rotted black... He left only one word as his last words: Amitabha."
"..."
"You asked if I was afraid. Yes, I am afraid."
People often compare human voices to birds.
But I guarantee Heavenly Demon's voice was something no beast could imitate.
"I am afraid."
A murmur like a single flower petal falling.
"I am afraid of my internal energy being exhausted. I am afraid of even my true qi being depleted. I am afraid of the blizzard raging, afraid of the sun not shining, and when day breaks, I am afraid that my subordinates, the things that were my subordinates, will have disappeared. With every breath, I worry about how many more breaths I can take. With every heartbeat, I am afraid of how many more beats I will be able to feel."
Heavenly Demon lamented.
"I am afraid that I will ultimately fail to kill that old man, and I am afraid that the old man will ultimately fail to kill me. I am afraid of the day when the old man and I will lie side by side on a bed, unable to move a single muscle. I am afraid that I will lie on a bed, lying there, simply waiting for my internal energy to dry up and vanish."
A meaningless death.
Even the fact that they had struggled to the very end would lose all meaning. They would die. Snow would fall and fall again upon the world left behind after their deaths, and only a colorless landscape painting would remain.
"Ahh."
This was the ending that [Chronicles of the Heavenly Demon] would meet.
It was the ending of the world.
"The world is this frightening a thing."
A day passed.
The 8th day since falling into the Apocalypse.
Two days remained until the world's destruction.
"Demon."
Lying on the bed, the Murim Alliance Master muttered.
"I can no longer move my body."
The Murim Alliance Master was smiling.
And he was crying.
"I'm sorry."
A low murmur.
That was the sound of a single world reaching its destruction.