Chapter 8. The Identity of the Monologue (2)
Chapter 8. The Identity of the Monologue (2)
Luck.
My dodging the Sword Saint's strike had been pure luck.
"Hm?"
The Sword Saint's eyes flew open. He had probably taken me for some extraordinary master. So he had been prepared for a master to block or dodge his blade, even to counterattack... but he surely hadn't expected me to roll across the ground in such an unsightly manner.
"Hey, Sword Saint, sir, hold on a moment. Please, just hear me out!"
Dying didn't matter. I'd followed him intending to die anyway. But even if I was going to die, I wanted to find out whether there was any way to clear up the Sword Saint's misunderstanding before I did. That way, I could avoid pointless clashes from the next loop onward.
"I'm really just a nobody F-rank hunter..."
"To dodge my blade. You must indeed be a top-class assassin!"
"Ah, is this old man deaf?!"
This was bad. Far from clearing up the misunderstanding, it had only deepened.
Dodging that attack earlier had been, I repeat, pure luck. I hadn't even been able to track where the blade had come from or how it had flown. The old man possessed skill that far, far surpassed my perception.
'If he attacks again, there's no way I can dodge!'
Did that mean I had no choice but to give up on persuading him?
Resigned to death, I watched the Sword Saint approach slowly.
"......"
He hesitated.
Just then, the Sword Saint faltered for a moment. His steps came to a halt.
At first, I thought to myself,
'Oh? Is he actually going to hear me out?'
But no. The Sword Saint wasn't looking at me. The white-haired old man was frowning at the empty air. Wondering if a mosquito was flying around, I glanced over too, but there was nothing in the air.
"...Did I not say I would handle it myself."
The old man let his words trail into the empty air.
"...Silence. To capture and interrogate him. How could I leave such a demon alive......"
More muttering to himself.
'What?'
The Sword Saint, who had seemed ready to cut me down at any moment, had for some reason paused his blade. Instead, he began muttering to himself incessantly. The hair-trigger crisis had been deferred, if only slightly.
I narrowed my brow.
'Could it be... is that muttering a skill too?'
Yes. Maybe it was.
At the tavern, I'd written the old man off as mentally ill. But now, watching him mutter right in front of me, something felt different. For a mental illness, it was a bit too precise, wasn't it? The old man truly seemed to be conversing with someone.
'A telepathy skill?'
The hypothesis suddenly came to mind. Telepathy, or voice transmission. A technique for freely conversing with people far away. I knew such skills actually existed.
'Then... he's relaying information about me to other people too.'
A chill ran down my spine.
'Something like, "I've found the one who slaughtered 4,091 people"?'
A wanted order.
The Hunter Management Bureau very rarely designated named wanted targets. They called it a wanted order, but in practice it was no different from an execution order. A wanted target turned every major guild into an enemy and was hunted by the highest-ranked hunters.
Until they were publicly executed in the plaza of Babylon, the city on the Tower's first floor.
'Anything but that.'
I clenched my teeth.
'I have to die right now!'
So that no wanted order would be issued, no matter what. So that I could go back 24 hours and erase everything that had just happened. I had to die immediately, without a moment's delay.
I glared straight ahead.
"...It is done. My mind is already made up. No matter that he is my master......"
The old man was still muttering to the empty air. Whether it was merely an old man's mental illness or whether he was actually conversing with someone... I couldn't be 100% certain. But even without certainty, I opened my mouth to prevent the worst possible catastrophe.
"How are your grandson and granddaughter doing?"
The old man's muttering stopped short.
Then he slowly turned his head toward me.
"I've been hearing that the outside world has been dangerous lately. The Sword Saint's grandson and granddaughter must surely be lovely. You must worry about them a great deal."
"......"
Deep blue eyes.
His pupils were calm, like the scales of fish in deep water.
"I heard your family was originally prominent in Northern Europe. Aren't families like that exactly what terrorists like to target? Who knows. Perhaps, without the Sword Saint knowing, your grandson and granddaughter have already had their lives taken by brigands......"
Shhk.
'Huh.'
A sound like a ripe apple being sliced in half.
'Huh?'
At first, I couldn't understand what that sound was. I was looking at the old man the whole time. He clearly hadn't moved. He hadn't so much as twitched. He was simply silent, his aged lips pressed shut.
Where had the sound come from?
The strange thing didn't end there. The Sword Saint had originally been standing upright on the ground. But wasn't the ground gradually turning upside down?
The horizon tilted. The half-moon flipped over and rose in the night sky like a ferryboat. In the middle of a world where the night sky lay upside down and the waxing moon tilted into a waning moon, a single old man hung from the horizon.
"......"
The old man's blue eyes watched me. His eyes, hanging in the sky, resembled starlight, and I felt I understood why the old man was called the Sword Saint—the Sword Star.
And then I realized.
'Ah.'
The ground hadn't turned upside down.
My head had been cut off, and it was falling upside down.
A single strike.
'Beautiful.'
My eyes hadn't been able to read the old man's strike. I hadn't read it, but I could see the world after the strike had cut through it. Looking at it, I thought, without meaning to, that it was beautiful.
A moment later, I collided with something. My head went blank. My ears rang. I couldn't hear anything. Only a little later did I realize that my head had fallen and struck the ground.
By the time I realized it... nothing more reflected in my eyes.
[You have died.]
What kind of skill did it take.
How many long years of training did it take to reach such a realm?
[Skill conditions are met through death.]
I was seized by an emotion completely different from when I'd been killed by the Flame Emperor... the complete opposite. Toward the Flame Emperor, I had felt betrayal. I had wanted revenge.
But toward the Sword Saint, no.
'I want to be like him.'
I was simply envious.
'I want that strike.'
The emotion I had felt before I learned the truth about the Flame Emperor, Yoo Soo-ha.
'I want it too!'
Jealousy. Possessiveness. Admiration.
Endless desires set my heart ablaze once more.
And there was a voice that answered my flames.
[Randomly copying a skill from Hunter Marcus Calenbury.]
Cards appeared in the darkened world.
[Forming a skill card.]
Shhk-shhk!
The cards all showed only their backs. Was it to hide which card held which skill?
'Still, the card colors are clearer than when I died to the Flame Emperor.'
Maybe it was because I'd already grown accustomed to death. 4,090 times. Just as the Sword Saint had proven with his [Kill Count Skill], I had already experienced death thousands of times.
There was surely no hunter more familiar with death than I.
'Not to brag, but.'
It was a moment when I wanted to smile bitterly.
[Please select a skill card.]
The cards floating still in the air began darting about rapidly.
'Whoa!'
The suddenness startled even me. But I quickly collected myself and focused on the cards.
'I don't need anything else. Gold! I absolutely have to draw a gold card.'
They were fast. So fast that tracking them with my conscious mind was nearly impossible.
'Good lord.'
Had I drawn a gold card from cards flying this quickly when I'd been killed by the Flame Emperor? Me? How had I done that? Thinking back on it now, I'd been truly, absurdly lucky back then.
'There's no rule saying luck can't find me one more time here! Come on. Gold. Where are you, gold?'
But.
Something was strange.
'Huh?'
No matter how carefully I looked, I couldn't see it.
'There's no... gold card?'
Among the cards darting before my eyes, there were shit-colored cards and silver cards. But a card shining gold was nowhere to be found. I focused several times, thinking I'd misseen, but what wasn't there wasn't there.
There was only one possibility.
'N-no way?'
I was horrified.
'There really... isn't one?'
From the start.
The Sword Saint had no S-rank skill.
3
'That's impossible!'
I felt like screaming.
'He's a hunter who reached rank 1, for crying out loud! A hunter who reigned like a legend until that bastard appeared, and he doesn't have a single S-rank skill?'
It was hard to believe. But it was true. My own skill proved it beyond any doubt. The Sword Saint, Marcus Calenbury, had reigned at the very top alone, without any S-rank ability.
Truly shock and horror.
'No, no! This can't be!'
Faced with shock and horror, my reaction was... simply denial of reality.
'There's definitely a broken skill among the silver cards!'
Whether to call this pitiful or pathetic.
Anyway, I was desperate. With a desperately earnest heart, I glared at the cards.
'Three shit-colored cards. Four silver cards.'
Seven cards in total were flying about in a blur.
'I'll completely ignore the shit-colored cards.'
That was the rational choice.
Now the question was which silver card to pick!
The [Kill Count Skill] was probably among them. And there would be some unidentified broken skill too.
Naturally, I didn't want a subtle technique like Kill Count. I wanted a broken technique on par with a regression skill.
'A one-in-four chance!'
In a word, a gamble.
I had to pick the winner purely by luck.
'Please come up!'
I reached out my hand.
'I'm begging you, please come up just this once! Sword Saint's broken skill!'
And I snatched a silver card.
[Selection complete. Copying skill.]
[Regressing 24 hours into the past.]
* * *
"—Hahk!"
I bolted upright, swallowing a single gasp.
A tiny room.
My studio apartment, a generous two pyeong that seemed like it might even enrich my heart, greeted me. The bedding, unwashed for a long time, was occupied by a musty smell.
Unfortunately, I didn't have much leisure to admire my one-room place.
"D-did I get it?"
I checked my status window right away.
To find out whether I'd succeeded or failed in the one-in-four gamble!
+
Name: Kim Gong-ja
Rank: F-rank
Skills (3/4)
1. I Want to Be Like You (S+): Passive
2. Regressor's Clockwork Watch (EX): Passive
3. Sword Constellation (A+): Passive
4. None
+
"Ah......"
I sighed. It was half admiration, half lamentation.
"At least I drew an A-plus-rank skill, which is a relief......"
First, the admiration.
Even if it didn't reach S-rank, I was relieved to have drawn the best possible option. Avoiding a subtle technique like the Kill Count Skill was also lucky, if anything.
"...Another passive skill, huh."
And then the lamentation.
What I'd originally aimed for was a combat skill. Something like a rare martial art, or swordsmanship, or a technique that awakened aura. Abilities like that were mostly active skills.
In other words, I had failed to obtain a top-tier combat skill.
"Haa."
A sigh escaped.
"No, come to think of it, this is just me being greedy......"
If countless low-ranking hunters heard my current complaint, they'd go mad. How dare I complain after getting an A+ rank skill.
Right.
I decided to think positively. To focus on the skill in front of me, for now.
"Open skill card."
Slip.
Cards visible only to the hunter himself floated up.
[I Want to Be Like You (S+)]
[Regressor's Clockwork Watch (EX)]
[Sword Constellation (A+)]
Sword Constellation. From the name alone, I couldn't get any sense of what kind of skill it was.
"Well, I Want to Be Like You has a pretty weird name too."
It was hard to judge from the name alone whether a skill was a dud or a winner.
Maybe it was an incredible technique.
I was consoling myself like that, holding the silver card, when—
—Ah. What's all this racket?
A voice that shouldn't have been audible came from somewhere.
—Old man, this master has told you time and again. If you're going out to train in the middle of the night, go quietly.
"......"
—When you move, I just float along after you on my own. There's no need to wake me. Let's please just live with some manners toward each other. Hm?
Slowly.
Languidly, I turned to look in the direction the voice had come from.
The bedding in the one-room apartment. There, in a space too cramped even for me to lie alone... something was there. Hazy, but definitely present. That something was lying with its back to me, sprawled like an ox.
"Excuse me."
Goosebumps rose.
"Who are you?"
—Huh?
And then my eyes met those of the unidentified something.
A ghost. A specter.
Something that could never be seen as a living human.
—Ehh?
The ghost had a fierce face. If it hadn't been unclothed, I might have mistaken it for a gorilla. A broad-shouldered ghost, scowling even with its eyebrows, boasted an appearance worthy of a lead role in a horror film.
—Hey, who are you?
"...I'd like to ask you that. Who are you?"
—You can see me?
I nodded, feeling awkward.
"Yes."
—You can hear my voice too?
"Uh, well, seeing as we're communicating right now... wouldn't common sense suggest so?"
What was this? Was I talking to a ghost right now?
I'd thought ghosts normally wandered around like monsters, steeped in the grudges of their lives. But this ghost was different. Aside from its hazy body, it spoke exactly like a human.
—Huh, strange? This shouldn't be possible.
The ghost tilted its head. It seemed I wasn't the only one who didn't understand the current situation.
—Where is this? It's cramped like a doghouse. Where did old man Marcus disappear to, and why is a whelp like you in front of me?
Only then did the first words I could understand come out of the ghost's mouth.
"Uh, by Marcus, do you mean... Marcus Calenbury? The Sword Saint?"
—Tsk tsk. Well, it's far too generous for a beginner like that to be called the Sword Saint.
The ghost clicked its tongue, as if something didn't sit right with it.
—Anyway, that old man they call by that name is the one, yes. Where did he go? He should be around here.
I was dumbfounded.
'The Sword Saint is a beginner?'
The current rank 1 hunter. The man who would reign at the very top until the distant future, unless he was fated to be killed by the Flame Emperor, Yoo Soo-ha, as I had been.
What in the world was this ghost before me, calling such a giant a mere beginner? And why had I suddenly started seeing ghosts?
"......"
To resolve my questions, I flipped over the silver card.
And read the skill description.
+
[Sword Constellation]
Rank: A+
Effect: From another world. Cleared the Tower of another world up to the 99th floor, but was thwarted with the 100th floor before his eyes. His lingering resentment kept him from passing on, and he became a guardian spirit. He cannot physically interfere with this world, but he can intrude upon the owner's mind.
Seek advice from his abundant experience and astonishing skill!
※However, no one except the owner can perceive the guardian spirit.
※This skill was copied from Hunter Marcus Calenbury.
+
I was at a loss for words.
—Hey, I asked where the old man went. Are you ignoring me right now? Tch. Hey, hey! I may not look it, but back in my day, I was a big deal! With just one blink, most warriors would tremble on their own, and you dare disrespect me!
Good heavens.
It seemed I had copied the Sword Saint's guardian spirit.