Chapter 74. The One Who Picks Up Death (3)
Chapter 74. The One Who Picks Up Death (3)
"My lord......."
Agwi cautiously looked up at me.
"One hundred and twelve deaths is excessive. Even now, you have grown so gaunt over these past few days that it is difficult to recognize you......."
"What, has your loyalty grown so much that you're worried about my body now?"
Agwi hesitated. She seemed to be deliberating over how to answer.
Whether it would be better to add flattery. Or whether it would be better to reveal her true feelings as they were.
"...If you were to disappear, my lord, I would disappear as well."
Agwi spoke.
"I would no longer be able to live in my small paradise. My life and memories, my meaning, everything would vanish. Everything depends upon you, my lord. I worry for myself, and therefore I also worry for your body."
"I like the honesty."
I raised the corner of my mouth.
"So how is it. Is life worth living these days?"
"Pardon......?"
"You've been living in Estelle's village. The people you cherished more than your own life have returned. How have you been?"
After gaining the right to monopolize the 20th floor. I had released Agwi into the village. Except for times when I had tasks for her, as now, I intended to let her continue staying in the village from here on.
Agwi answered with a tense expression.
"I am... getting along well."
"Nothing out of the ordinary?"
"If by out of the ordinary you mean... ah."
Agwi blinked.
"There was a time when those who call themselves hunters came rushing in. They said the secret behind the Death King's sudden strength—the treasure hidden by the five major guilds—must be here... But the witch you brought, my lord, and the hunters who follow her stopped them, so it never grew into a major disturbance."
As expected of the Black Dragon Guild. Their after-sales service is reliable.
"The petty lords of the neighboring kingdoms no longer come sniffing around either. They are having a hard enough time with the very nomads they brought in to attack us... Even setting that aside, the Empire and the Temple simultaneously declared my village a holy site. From time to time, lizardmen and elves come bearing gifts......."
It seemed the affairs of the other world were resolving themselves in due course as well.
"That, however... since I no longer possess any abilities."
"Mm."
"The sick who come seeking me after hearing rumors... and, especially after the declaration of the holy site, pilgrims hoping for miracles have also joined them in coming. I do not know what to do with them... For now, the hunter priests who followed the one called the Heretic Questioner, whom you introduced to me, my lord, are tending to them......."
"Don't worry. I have something in mind."
Specifically, I was planning to establish the Pharmacist's pharmacy anew on the 20th floor.
'She said she'd only take new clients through me.'
Once this expedition was wrapped up, the Pharmacist's standing would be solidified.
'I should make sure to handle the logistics properly too.'
Since patients would be coming endlessly, she'd be able to accumulate experience with all sorts of illnesses.
'The workload will be too much for the Pharmacist alone. She'll end up taking on staff. It'd be fine to attach Agwi as her assistant, and it'd be fine to have her take on aspiring pharmacist hunters as disciples. Before long, the pharmacy's scale will naturally grow.......'
It wouldn't take long for the new pharmacy to be recognized as a branch of the Alchemy Ministry, and for that branch to then become the headquarters.
'I have to take care of my own people.'
I smiled.
"Anything else?"
"Nothing else in particular... Ah, Dajena—Dajena is a child of my village. She seems to have taken a liking to this thing called tteokbokki that the hunters brought. And Garchov—he is an old man who guards the orchard—he shares fruit with the Black Dragon hunters standing watch over the village, and in return, the Black Dragon hunters give him fruit from your world, my lord......."
The wind blew.
Snowflakes scattered, and the moonlight quietly seeped through the drifting snow. Agwi's voice flowed like the snow as well. I listened to the story continuing beneath the moonlit night until the very end.
Agwi bowed her head deeply.
"...That is how things stand."
"Sounds like life is worth living."
Agwi answered cautiously.
"Yes. Life is worth living."
I nodded.
"Then the people of this world should get to live a life worth living too."
"......."
"Hurry and gather the corpses."
Golden hair cascaded below her shoulders. Agwi had bowed her head. A voice slipped from her lowered lips.
"I shall carry out your command."
3
There is a saying: the right person in the right place.
Summoning Agwi and entrusting her with the collection of deaths had, in the end, been an excellent decision.
A Constellation who had fallen from heaven. The one called the [Demon King of Fall Rain], who had once brought the other world to ruin. She knew well how to harvest death.
"I shall begin by seeking out villages or cities with government offices."
At Agwi's gesture, thousands of skeletons moved.
"As they are the workplaces of officials, they will surely have maps. They will be nothing more than crude maps, but they should suffice for cross-referencing the geography. I intend to piece together the fragmented maps and search out remote farming and fishing villages."
From the third day after the search began, zombies were delivered. They were not corpses of people of the jianghu who had learned martial arts. They were, to the last, ordinary farmers and common folk. The corpses of people who had been just that.
"Unable to bear watching her children starve, a mother hanged herself alongside her own children. I shall bring her corpse."
The skeletons' bones were white. The white bones filed in, carrying the corpses. In the middle of the snowfield. The whiteness of bone and the whiteness of snow were difficult to tell apart. And so, seen from afar... it looked exactly as though the corpses were moving their own feet, gathering toward me.
"The children who opened their eyes in the morning to find their mother's corpse. The children who wept beside their mother until they withered like wild grass and died. I shall bring their corpses as well."
The procession of corpses continued.
Deaths lined up in rows.
"The villagers who cursed the dead mother, saying she had failed in her duty as a parent."
"The one who hid beneath a well to escape the plague but could not climb back out in the end."
"The prisoner who, locked in a cell, never even had the chance to flee and starved to death as he was."
Agwi selected and selected again, presenting the poor to me.
Like a vassal offering only the most precious things in tribute to a king.
When a week had passed, Agwi knelt once more upon the snowfield.
"I have brought them, my lord."
I gazed out over the snowfield.
-Groooo.......
-Ugh, uuugh!
-Kiiiuuu.......
Countless deaths were lined up.
The corpses thrashed, their limbs held by skeletons. Some of the corpses' faces were old. Some faces were young. Starvation did not discriminate between men and women, young and old.
"...Good."
I loosened my tie. I took off my suit, and discarded my underclothes. The dark night. With my bare skin exposed, I commanded the skeletons.
"Release them."
That moment.
The instant their bodies were released from the skeletons' grip, the 112 zombies lunged. Instinctively. Toward the place where the scent of living flesh wafted thickly.
Toward the spot where I stood.
"Come on."
I smiled.
"All of you, come!"
Crunch!
A child's corpse leaped at me. It bit into my calf. Just as the horrific pain was about to climb up my calf, the agony was severed midway. An old corpse had torn into my thigh. The pain that had burst from my calf was cut off at my thigh, then surged again, thickening in my stomach.
"......!"
I probably screamed. But I could not hear that scream. Because a corpse had torn off my ears.
My lips were devoured. My tongue was devoured. Unable to hear, unable to speak, I merely watched as countless shadows burrowed into my body.
[You have died.]
I looked up at the night sky.
The moon was pure white, as though this were a land of eternal snow.
[Reproducing the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]
The night sky that some old man had looked up at for the last time was exactly like this moment.
He had been a fisherman who had spent his whole life on the river. When his finger was bitten by a jiangshi, the old man did not panic. He calmly steered his ferry boat.
-If I die while aboard the boat, I won't cause trouble for the world.
At the riverside where the village was visible, the old man's ferry boat bobbed gently, swaying.
The old man lay down in the boat. It was as comfortable as lying in a coffin. It would be fine if the boat capsized in the waves and he died like this. It would be fine to die as though falling asleep....... The old man considered being born by the river and dying by the river to be happiness.
The moon he looked up at for the last time was serene.
[Reproducing the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]
It was impossible to understand how the world had come to change so much.
The young governor thought as he walked the castle walls at night. Originally, he had not even been a local official. He had been a scholar who memorized a few lines of writing and ran a village school. But the governor had died, the governor's local officials had died, and the officials' underlings had died.
Death had followed death, as though seeking word of more death. At the end of that chain of inquiries was himself.
-Lord of the castle.
A soldier approached and spoke. He, too, had originally not been a soldier but a tavern keeper's errand boy. Though he was obsequious, his mind worked well, so he was useful.
-What is it?
-The granary is empty. In half a month, there will not be a single handful of millet in the storehouse. The fishermen occasionally bring in fish, but it is not enough. What shall we do.......
-Reduce the grain distributed to the elderly first.
The young governor said.
-The jiangshi soldiers are countless. We must conserve those who can still fight. Reduce the food going to the elderly and children by one-third.
[Reproducing the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]
The governor before him was ruthless. At times he seemed colder than the jiangshi. The soldier sometimes wondered where the bookish scholar who had only ever recited the classics at the village entrance had learned such resolve.
-The backlash will be considerable.......
-Reduce the food given to the young by half as well. There will be those who are reduced more and those who are reduced less, but if everyone is reduced together, it will be bearable.
-Still, will there not be complaints?
-I will starve first.
The governor said shortly.
-I will fast entirely. If I, the leader, put nothing in my mouth, the malcontents will lose their strength.
-...Will you be all right?
-This place will not hold out much longer anyway. What difference will a few days of fasting make?
The moon seen from the castle wall was tranquil.
[Reproducing the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]
-At this rate, we're all going to starve to death!
The little one shouted urgently. She was a girl. A beggar belonging to the Beggars' Sect, now that the distinction between rich and poor had vanished, she had become the leader of the children her age.
-The castle lord says kids shouldn't even eat. He's basically saying we shouldn't even live!
-Then what do we do, sis......?
-Even if we die, we should eat something before we die. That way we'll become good-looking jiangshi.
The little one huffed.
-I learned a recipe in the Beggars' Sect. It's called a mud cookie. Literally, a mud cookie.
-Mud cookie......?
-It's a cookie you can make as much as you want as long as you have mud.
The little one's eyes sparkled.
-Listen up! The kids who know how to swim keep catching fish. Don't go handing it over to the adults for nothing—we share it only among ourselves. And the rest of you go to the riverside and scoop up soft mud.
-What are you going to do?
-I'll show you.
[Reproducing the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]
The children scooped up mud from the riverside. The dirt was mixed with grains of sand. The children put the mud into sieves and strained out the gravel, over and over.
-If you roll this mud into balls and spread it out on a straw mat.
The little leader worked her hands diligently. She rolled the mud into a ball and threw it onto the mat with a smack. Then she spread the mud wide, wide, like spreading plaster.
-Okay, done!
-Done... with what?
-Now we just dry it in the sun. Then the mud cookies are made.
The children were dumbfounded.
-That's just dirt baked in the sun!
-How is that a cookie!
-Shut up. It's a recipe passed down as a secret of the Beggars' Sect. Watch and learn.
The little leader took out a pouch. It was a pouch containing salt. Salt had always been precious, but now that rations had stopped, each grain was like gold dust. The little one mixed a little salt into the mud dough.
-There!
After half a day, the mud had dried completely.
-Now it's ready. Try one each! But be careful when you eat it. If you eat too much in one bite, it doesn't taste good! Nibble at it sparingly, just a little at a time.
The children bit into the mud cookies, half-doubting.
[Reproducing the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]
-...It's surprisingly edible?
One child nibbled at a mud cookie with their front teeth like a hamster.
[Reproducing the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]
-I like it because it's salty.
Another child licked a mud cookie with their tongue, eyes round and wide, as if lapping at ice cream. The child's saliva soaked the edges of the mud cookie, leaving them sodden.
[Reproducing the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]
-It tastes bad.......
Another child simply made a tearful face.
The little leader giggled.
-It's okay. As long as we can eat it, that's enough. From now on, we have to take care of everything we eat ourselves. We'll normally eat mud cookies, and when we catch fish, we'll eat fish too. Got it?
-Okay, sis.......
The children soothed their starving stomachs with mud.
The human throat was a fickle thing. The children's throats accepted salt-laced dirt as food.
For the mud to be swallowed, the saltiness had to deceive the tongue. So the children did not bite straight into the mud cookies when eating them. They licked the mud cookies with their tongues, tasting the salt.
-Don't lick too much! The flavor all disappears. You have to nibble while you lick.
Every day, the children kneaded mud at the riverside.
-Huh?
The riverbank.
-Look over there, it's a corpse.
It was the very edge of the river where an old man had drifted away aboard his ferry boat.
The old man born by the river had died by the river. He had considered that happiness. He had thought that dying with the ferry boat as his coffin was a way to cause no trouble for the world.
There was one thing the old man had not considered. The fact that drowned corpses sometimes wash up on the riverbank.
If dying in the river had been the old man's happiness, then washing up on this bank—not the opposite one—was the old man's misfortune.
And it was everyone's misfortune as well.
-An old man must have fallen into the water and died.
-Poor thing.......
-Maybe he was a fisherman.
The children approached the old corpse with fear and curiosity.
-Huh?
It was a dark dawn.
-W-wait!
-Huh?
-It's a jiangshi! It's not just a corpse!
Catching the scent of the children's tender youth, the corpse writhed.
-Run!
There were children who fled.
-Ah.......
There was a child who could not flee.
[Reproducing the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]
That was the end.
[Reproducing the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]
A riverside castle tower, cut off from contact with the imperial capital and severed from the surrounding villages, was destroyed just like that. The old man died. The last castle lord died fighting. A foot soldier died trying to slip out through the castle gate. The little leader died shielding her younger sibling.
[Reproducing the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]
They had tried to live.
[Reproducing the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]
They had struggled.
[Reproducing the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]
Because they had tried to live, they had endured starvation.
[Reproducing the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]
The fingers of the children as they searched the wet ground by the river, scooping up mud. The hands that spread the mud dough wide across the straw mat. The fingertips that clutched the fully dried mud cookies.
[Reproducing the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]
One hundred and twelve deaths.
Among them, there was not a single gesture that was not born of starvation.
[Trauma reenactment complete.]
[Confirmed that the subject's ego has been maintained.]
[Ending penalty.]
I slowly opened my eyes.
"......."
The snowfield was silent.
The quiet night. My muttering flowed out low.
"I was thinking maybe I should learn how to boil tree bark......."
Reality had surpassed my imagination. In a world on the brink of ruin, had tree bark not even qualified as trauma? Humans, when cornered, could eat even mud.
"Yeah, I suppose that's possible."
I stood and dug into the snow. I wrapped Aura around my bare hands. I dug and dug through the snow until I reached the frozen ground beneath the perennial snow.
It was the first ground I had seen since falling into this world.
"Let's see......."
Digging into ground that had been frozen for years was not easy. I had no choice but to use Aura. I scooped out a handful of dirt and seared it hot with Aura along with the perennial snow. Just like boiling soup. After a long while, the grains of dirt began to soften.
It was, quite literally, muddy water.
I picked out the grains of sand and gravel one by one. I did as I had seen in the dream. I kneaded the mud into a round shape. I took off my suit jacket and used it as a mat, spreading the kneaded lump of dirt wide across it.
"Mm."
Time passed. The mud cookie baked in the morning and midday sun. I carefully lifted the mud cookie—shaped just like dalgona—with both hands.
"...Thank you for the food."
I nibbled at it with my teeth.
A rustling sound echoed inside my mouth.
"......."
I licked the edge of the mud cookie with my tongue. The texture softened a little. But it only softened at the tip of my tongue—when I took the crumbled mud cookie onto my tongue, the grains of dirt clung to the roof of my mouth. My whole mouth rustled.
"......."
After a while, I got the hang of it. This food was not meant to be chewed with the molars. You were supposed to gnaw at it with your front teeth, then swallow it down your throat a little at a time. The warmth of the sun and the smell of the earth. I slowly ate away at the food that held only those two things.
Mm.
"...It tastes bad."
I bit into it.
"It really tastes bad."
I nibbled at it.
"Seriously, it tastes bad."
I swallowed.
"......."
My shoulders trembled.
My heart trembled.
"......."
An emotion I could not put into words seized my entire body. Was it anger? Was it sorrow? Perhaps it was hatred. Human life originally came from the earth, so why could humans not eat the earth? Why were the scent of the soil and the texture of the dirt so utterly wretched?
Why.
"......."
Before I knew it, my right hand was clenched tight. An emotion that might be anger, might be sorrow, perhaps might be hatred, had congealed in my hand.
That was when I realized. Emotions that cannot be spoken with the mouth were, by nature, things to be gripped with the hand.
Not to be spoken, but to be swung.
Martial arts was simply the act of swinging the one handful that remained in your own hand.
"......."
Let's go back.
I drew the Holy Sword. I aimed the tip of the blade at my own throat.
Let's go back and show Heavenly Demon my sword. No, it is not my sword. It is the sword of the old man, the foot soldier, the castle lord, and the children who died without names.
I have never read a wuxia novel, so I know nothing of the profound principles of yin-yang and the five elements. If there is any principle in my martial art, it is merely their screams. If my blade contains the heavenly order, it is merely the gestures of humans abandoned by heaven.
Because it is resentment and grudge, it is demonic.
Because it is heaven looked up at with nothing but resentment and grudge, it is the Demonic Heaven (魔天).
I stabbed the Holy Sword through the center of my throat. Carrying the deaths of 112 people in my heart, I regressed. What I had to do was no different from the previous cycle.
I asked the Heavenly Demon to accept me as her disciple.
Just as before, the Heavenly Demon deliberated for one night.
After the night had passed, the Heavenly Demon presented me with a test.
"What is the test?"
"Over there."
The Heavenly Demon pointed to the bottom of the pit.
"I have thrown a single jiangshi soldier down there. He was a promising young prodigy of this cult and a peak-level master who had made quite a name for himself in the jianghu. Defeat that jiangshi. Then I shall accept you as an inner disciple."
The Heavenly Demon added one condition.
"Fight while feeling hunger. Fight the jiangshi soldier, but within your heart, only hunger. Only the pain of hunger must reside there. I forbid any emotion or thought other than that from creeping into your mind. Can you do it?"
I did not answer.
There was no reason to force into an answer something that could not be spoken.
Instead, I silently leaped into the pit.
-Groooar!
A single jiangshi lunged at me.
I looked at the jiangshi with indifferent eyes.
"......."
With the scent of mud in my mouth.
With the texture of a lump of dirt in my gestures.
With only the children's starvation held in my heart.
Demonic Heavenly God Art魔天神功.
First Form第一式.
Sword of Starvation餓死流劍.
I swung the sword.
First strike, I cut both legs.
Second strike, I severed both arms.
Third strike, I cut the jiangshi's neck.
Among them, there was not a single gesture that was not born of starvation.
The one who had been a peak-level master of the Demonic Cult lay crumpled at the bottom of the pit in silence.
"......."
I looked up.
The Heavenly Demon's mouth was hanging open. Just as when she had first seen our party, perhaps with even more astonishment than then, she was staring at me. Her gaze wavered. After her gaze wavered, her heart would surely quake.
The meaning of a life she had thought she had lost entirely.
Because she had seen, before her very eyes, that meaning beginning anew.
Because she had come to see it.
"Heavenly Demon."
I spoke slowly.
"Which death shall I demonstrate next?"