Chapter 72. The One Who Picks Up Death (1)
Chapter 72. The One Who Picks Up Death (1)
1
What word in the world fits worst with [zombie]?
I know it's a random question.
But this world was occupied by zombies. Having suddenly found myself fighting zombies while training in martial arts, I naturally couldn't help but think about zombies. And so I had just realized what word goes worst with zombie.
-Graaah!
It was [Palm Blast].
-Uwaah, aaahhh!
A zombie in black martial robes brought its hands together and fired a palm blast.
I'm not joking. This is real.
Let me say it again. A [zombie] who had been a murim martial artist in life let out a shriek and launched [Palm Blast] at me.
"What the hell......."
Fwooosh!
The palm blast lightly shoved me backward. I floated into the air like a wooden stick. What had happened so far was already enough to make me lose my mind and my wits, but unfortunately, it didn't end there.
-Uwooooh!
The zombie kicked off the ground—tat! It used a mysterious footwork technique, its lightness skill flowing smoothly. As though its body were filled with helium, the zombie shot into the air and flew right up to my nose in an instant.
Insane.
"Hey! Hold on, this is seriously not fair!"
I desperately swung the Holy Sword. But before I could cut the zombie down, a voice stopped my blade.
"Halt! Do not swing your sword recklessly."
It was the Heavenly Demon's voice.
She was looking down at my fight from above the pit.
"Did I not tell you? Recall hunger, the pain of one who starved to death. Recollect only the sensation of starvation. If you merely swing your blade, the Demonic Heavenly God Art is nothing but a shell."
"B-but!"
The zombie opened its jaws right in front of my face. Snap! I barely twisted my body to avoid the zombie's teeth. With no time to execute a proper breakfall, I tumbled to the ground. Maybe my evasion made it angrier. The zombie roared and charged again.
"I'm not particularly hungry right now!"
"Fool."
The Heavenly Demon shouted as if frustrated.
"If there is no red before your eyes, can you not picture red in your mind? If you are not hungry now, can you not revive the feeling of starvation?"
Graaah!
Even while the Heavenly Demon spoke to me, the zombie kept slashing its claws without pause. If those claws touched me even once, it was over. I'd be infected with the zombie virus too, and become Kim Zombie in the truest sense.
Clang! Clang!
The zombie's claws struck my sword ferociously. I couldn't bring myself to attack and was barely managing to defend. It was hell.
"If you cannot do it, it is because you are not yet accustomed to the sensation of hunger. Your belly is full to bursting. One who learns the Demonic Heavenly God Art must be able to summon sensations freely!"
The sensation of hunger.
The memory of starvation.
"Recall the longest you have ever gone hungry. Chew over the sensation of that time. Where were you then? What did you most want to eat? How long did you starve!"
"The longest I've gone hungry is three to four days......."
"What? Three to four days?"
The Heavenly Demon was dumbfounded.
"...The longest you have ever gone hungry in your entire life is barely three days? Absurd. The world has long since fallen into chaos, and famine comes with every other season. Unless you are the child of a prestigious house, how could you have gone hungry for only three days?"
"Th-the frontier we lived in was much more prosperous than the Central Plains......."
Of course, the Tower was more abundant than the murim, where people of the jianghu roamed. It was a place that enjoyed modern civilization, after all. There were probably plenty of hunters who had never gone hungry for more than two days.
"Hah. Haaah. Tsk tsk tsk."
The Heavenly Demon sighed.
"We cannot communicate. Hunger is the most urgent of sensations. It is a pain that cannot be skipped even for a day, a universal agony that no one can refuse. People fundamentally live to soothe their hunger. The hunger felt by the Son of Heaven and the hunger felt by the lowliest commoner are no different. If you do not even know this, how could you awaken the Demonic Heavenly God Art?"
No.
I'd been pretty hungry plenty of times living as an F-rank hunter for over ten years.
When I bought tteokbokki in the outside world, I'd counted how many rice cakes came in one serving and only bought from shops that gave four extra.
"Enough."
The Heavenly Demon turned her back.
"It is my fault! I expected something from you, if only for a moment, but you were all talk after all."
I was at the bottom of a massive pit. So the Heavenly Demon's back quickly vanished from my sight. Claaang! Clang! Barely blocking the zombie's teeth and claws, I shouted toward the already-distant Heavenly Demon.
"Heavenly Demon!"
There was no answer.
"Heavenly Demon?"
Still no answer.
The Heavenly Demon—she was a murim warrior with no reverse gear.
"Please wait! No, seriously, going hungry isn't some kind of official post! Does it make any sense that I can't learn martial arts because of that? Huh!"
The palm-blast zombie opened its jaws wide.
Ah.
"Oh, shit......."
Crunch!
[You have died.]
[Regressing 24 hours into the past.]
"...uck!"
I returned to a day earlier and stomped my feet—thud, thud. Upon regressing, I'd seen the palm-blast zombie's skill card, gone through its trauma, and received system confirmation that the target's ego had been maintained, but none of that mattered right now.
"I've lived through plenty of hardship, damn it!"
I fumed.
Rage. Competitive Spirit.
Only those two emotions burned in my heart as red flame and blue flame. They didn't just burn—they blazed.
-Wow.
The guardian spirit was nonchalant beside me.
-She's educating you in the fully traditional way. Well, I suppose that's right when she's teaching you the one and only secret art. A zombie, you see—if a human tries to get something the easy way, they end up becoming the raw ingredient themselves.......
"Fine. So that's how it's going to be!"
Ignoring the guardian spirit's words, I left the hot spring cave.
"You think I'll get scared and surrender just because you come at me like that? Not a chance. I'm someone who's died by burning! I've been roasted from the head down and died, you hear me! You think I can't die of hunger?"
-Uh.......
The guardian spirit wore a rare flustered expression.
-Zombie? What's wrong with you? Hey, don't do this. Learn the sword only from me, not from that Heavenly Demon woman or whatever she is. As a teacher, I'm far more lenient.......
"If you tell me to starve, then I'll starve!"
-Damn it.
The guardian spirit muttered.
-This is bad. This bastard's lost it. Ah, when this kid gets pissed, he really becomes a lunatic who can't see anything in front of him....... Another few dozen days are just going to fly by.......
From that day on, I entered the Hell Realm.
'I'm going to find an item needed to clear this stage.' That was the lie I told my companions. And then I left.
I went as far from the hot spring cave as possible by myself and holed up in the snowy mountains.
I did nothing. I just holed up.
-You crazy bastard.......
Did he know what I was trying to do?
The guardian spirit stared at me with cold, dead eyes.
-You're planning to just stay there until you starve to death, aren't you? Right?
"Yes, that's right."
-Good grief.
The guardian spirit lamented.
-Everyone in the neighborhood should know how much of a lunatic this kid is, not just me. Good grief! I'm the only one who knows. Good grief. Dying and becoming a ghost is my regret. My regret.
Noisy.
-Zombie. No, Gong-ja. Please, I'm begging you. I don't care if you get pissed and throw yourself into training, but what did I do wrong to have to sit here and watch you do it? Huh?
"Ugh, I said you're noisy."
-Let me ask one thing. How many days do you plan to hold out?
I sat in a small cave in the snowy mountains. It was different from the cave where the Heavenly Demon's group was staying. Naturally, there was no hot spring and no Fasting Pill. It was just a dark, cold cave.
"I don't know. For now, I have to get past 112 days."
-What?
"I saw it in the Heavenly Demon's trauma. She once endured 111 days without eating anything, surviving solely through qi circulation. So I'll hold out until day 112."
-You goddamn son of a.......
The guardian spirit unleashed a torrent of curses for about a minute. But it was meaningless. No matter what curses he spat, they couldn't damage my mind. I had already crossed my legs into the lotus position.
-You can't hold out for over 100 days even if you try!
The guardian spirit shouted.
-Look at the weather right now. It's cold! Freezing cold! If you don't wrap your body in Aura, you'll freeze to death on the spot. How are you going to keep your Aura circulating for 100 straight days? No matter how hard you strain, 20 days is your limit.
Perhaps thinking that curses wouldn't get through, the guardian spirit was attempting persuasion.
-Besides, Gong-ja, holding out for over 100 days is beyond the realm of hunger. You've never gone hungry for over 100 days, have you? If you haven't, then don't talk.
"Have you gone hungry, then?"
-Of course. In my younger days, I did fasting training with some monks, so I know. For a few days you feel like you're dying of hunger off and on, but after that, you mostly don't even feel hungry! That's not starving—it's just mental cultivation. Mental cultivation!
"Then the answer's obvious."
I said calmly.
"I starve until day 15, then just repeat the 15th day over and over."
-.......
The guardian spirit's mouth fell open.
-What did you say?
"I eat nothing for 15 days. I hold out only until the hunger peaks. Then I kill myself and stay on the 15th day. The hunger won't change either."
I looked at the guardian spirit.
"I repeat that until the accumulated time reaches 112 days. How about it? My Aura won't run out. I'll keep feeling the hunger. It's a perfect solution."
-You... crazy bastard.......
The guardian spirit was horrified.
-Just learn from me... don't take some weird cult leader as your master. My martial arts are better, I'm telling you. If you really need a master, learn from me. What on earth is driving you to such insane shit......!
"I'm going to learn the Demonic Heavenly God Art perfectly."
My heart blazed.
"Do you know why the Heavenly Demon despaired of the world? Do you know why this world, why the [Chronicles of the Heavenly Demon], came to an end? It's because she felt that living any longer held no meaning."
When the Murim Alliance Master lay on his sickbed.
The Heavenly Demon muttered alone.
「The whole world has become emptiness.」
That was the end. If one considered the world a single work, that was the final line written on the last page.
Meaninglessness.
No matter what the characters said anymore, it held no meaning. Even if the characters moved, went somewhere, felt something—none of it held any meaning. Even if hundreds of lines of dialogue stretched on. Even if thousands of lines of description ran wild. It was all useless.
It simply became the same as blank paper.
At that moment, the work dies, and the world dies too.
It is destroyed.
The [Serialization Cancellation] the Librarian spoke of must mean something like that.
-.......
I do not wish for this world to be destroyed in that way.
I absolutely do not want the character called the Heavenly Demon to end like that.
"...Living like the Flame Emperor would be easy."
I looked outside the cave. A white snowfield stretched out.
"I've got a thug skill too. I'm the best, and if I win, it's all because of my skill, and if others are worse than me, it's because they're idiots, and since I don't need to care about idiots, I just pick the stages that suit me and clear them, and no matter what happens, I sneer and scoff......."
I sat still in the lotus position and circulated Aura through my whole body.
"That does look cool, I'll admit."
And then I began.
"Sneering isn't childish, but people who live sneering are childish."
I starved.
"Righteous arguments are childish, but people who live by righteous arguments aren't childish."
I starved for a day.
"I'm a person too. I have to live."
I starved for two days.
"Then the answer to how I should live is obvious."
I starved for three days.
I starved, and starved again.