Chapter 2
Chapter 2
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 2
Chapter Title: Awakened in Another World
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Sion thought back to the time when he had first come to this world.
Another World Saga.
Having been forcibly transferred to the world known as AWS, he beat his chest in regret for not having properly grasped the game introduction or the overall story.
He knew almost nothing about this world.
With realistic graphics, an innovative system, and exhilarating action catching his eye, he had applied for the beta test. Then, amid his busy daily life, he forgot about it until he received a text on the day of the test and logged in.
And not even ten minutes after logging in, he realized that he wasn’t playing the game but had possessed the character “Sion” he had meticulously created and been transferred to the world of AWS.
He had no time for clichéd questions like “Why?” or “Why me in this world?”
In a harsh world with no status windows or stats—purely game-like elements—he was too busy just surviving.
In the meantime, Sion could not accept that this world was a game created by someone.
It wasn’t because of the realistic nature and environment that were unbelievable as VR.
People.
The people Sion saw and encountered in this world were not fragments of data made of 0s and 1s. They were real people with reason and emotions.
The joy and sorrow, anger, ecstasy, and glory he felt alongside them...
All of those were real to Sion.
Above all else, pain.
Sion had died twice.
His first death came three days after arriving in this world, at the hands of bandits.
He still couldn’t forget the sensation of the blade—cold yet searing hot—plunging into his gut.
Since he didn’t die right away, the pain of the mountain beasts that came after the bandits left and tore into him remained as vivid as if it were yesterday.
That horrific pain was real.
That was when he realized that all those claims in comics or novels about willingly enduring the agony of death because they wouldn’t die were lies.
Reviving at the spot of his death half a day after his first death, Sion felt relief at realizing he was immortal but vowed never to die again because of that pain.
That resolve grew even firmer after he was defeated in a war he joined as a mercenary, had his arms and legs severed, and died.
Even if stabbed by a sword, he recovered far faster than others in this world, and even if parts of his body were severed, they regenerated to normal in a matter of days—but the pain never became familiar.
Moreover, in this world, occasions for suffering pain weren’t just abundant; they were everyday occurrences.
A world where barbaric violence swirled in chaos.
As far as Sion could see, there was only one way to prevent death and pain that could strike at any moment in a place like this.
He had to grow stronger.
He traveled everywhere seeking out famous martial artists and begged to learn from them.
Knights, mercenaries, assassins, fighters...
Some chased him away, while others used him like a servant.
Even so, Sion strove to learn even a single technique from these experts in violence and murder.
And during that time, Sion discovered that he didn’t age either.
The character “Sion,” created when logging into AWS and now no different from his own flesh and blood, remained frozen at the initial setting of 26 years old without growing older.
His hair grew long, and his beard kept growing if left alone, but his physical age did not advance.
That was why he never studied under anyone for more than three years at most. Receiving instruction any longer might expose that he was ageless and immortal.
Some permitted his departure when he said he was leaving, but others, reluctant to lose a diligent unpaid slave, tried to hold him by force.
And most of the latter ended up dead.
He didn’t want to commit murder any more than he wanted to experience death and pain, but after living in this world for over ten years, he had grown accustomed to making choices to protect himself.
Whether his body or mind had grown stronger than his original self, he didn’t suffer PTSD or anything like it even after killing. Only a slight unease and discomfort lingered.
And so, nine years passed as he learned from five masters and killed three of them, and Sion grew strong.
It was around that time that the Demon Dragon Viuslek, called the Ash Wraith, appeared in the world.
“Was that sixty-five years ago? No, sixty-four?”
Poking at the campfire with hazy eyes, Sion muttered to himself.
Having just watched over his eldest son’s final moments, old memories kept resurfacing.
“Theo, my son...”
Thinking of his son brought back that sensation like his chest was being seared by fire.
Sion’s original surname was Jang. It was the surname of the priest who had taken in and raised him, an orphan with no one.
His name, Sion, had also been given to him in Christian style by that priest.
That was why he named his firstborn, who had given an orphan like him the incredibly special gift of becoming a “parent,” Jang Theo.
His eldest son Theo held unparalleled meaning.
Of course, when he heard that his youngest daughter Maria had been the first among his children to die in an accident, Sion had suffered an indescribable pain.
斷腸—the pain that comes when parents lose a child, said to feel like one’s intestines are being severed?
Sion now knew that such profound pain and sorrow were real.
He had felt the same agony six years ago when his second son Suun died of illness, and now with Theo gone, the pain of 斷腸 remained just as fierce.
Even though he had already lost two children and steeled himself, and even though Theo had lived far longer than his second son and youngest daughter before passing, it was still the same.
Now only his second daughter Tirsa remained, but Sion had no intention of seeking out his second daughter, who had become a grandmother.
Not just Tirsa—many grandsons and granddaughters flickered in his mind’s eye—but unlike his children, the grandchildren didn’t know about him.
The Sion Dukedom—and the future—was now theirs.
He had to carry on the resolve he made decades ago when he left the Dukedom with his wife.
Above all, he no longer had the confidence to watch his blood kin age and die before him.
—Now live your life.
The last words of his wife Stella, who had died over twenty years ago, suddenly came to mind.
She could have asked him to watch over their children and the Dukedom...
Even in her final moments as her breath stopped, his wife had thought only of him.
“That was you.”
Muttering softly, Sion stopped poking at the campfire and raised his head.
In this world without air pollution or light pollution, the moonlight had an astonishing effect on night vision.
On nights when the full moon rose, lanterns or torches weren’t particularly needed even outdoors.
And it had a major impact in the opposite case—nights when the moon wasn’t visible.
Meaning it provided literal pitch darkness where one couldn’t see an inch ahead.
Even with the campfire lit, everything beyond its light in the forest was utterly dark.
But not for Sion, whose physical abilities had reached the superhuman realm.
As he learned from his masters and gained real combat experience, growing stronger, Sion’s physical prowess had undergone a kind of repeated awakening.
It was a leap forward across the board that could even be called evolution.
That was why, even as he reminisced about the past, his hearing perfectly captured the noises of uninvited guests approaching slowly toward them from about fifty meters away.
And now, with their distance narrowed to around twenty meters, Sion could see the faces of the uninvited guests hiding in the bushes, piercing through the darkness.
“Six. All armed.”
The man who had been immersed in grief for his dead son and wife moments ago was no longer there.
Sion, staring ahead with a terrifyingly cold gaze, slowly rose to his feet.
Whether sensing its master’s shift in emotion or detecting the approaching uninvited guests, one of the two horses stood up clumsily in response.
“Why’s it standing? It noticed?”
“Talk sense. It’s not an owl—how could it see us from there?”
“We cover it all at once. Everyone, get ready.”
The uninvited guests’ whispers reached him.
They must have thought he absolutely couldn’t hear (and indeed, anyone else wouldn’t have), but Sion had detected not only their conversation but also their roughened breaths from tension and excitement—and their “killing intent.”
“When was it?”
Taking a step toward the bushes where the uninvited guests hid, Sion recalled the first moment he had sensed what was called killing intent.
“Ah, Verat. Right, it was Verat.”
His third master, the legendary assassin Verat (not his real name), had been a born killer, and it was under him that Sion learned to detect killing intent.
Upon realizing Sion was a “chosen one” like himself, Verat tried to kill him but ultimately failed and was slain by Sion.
The reason was simple.
Sion was not of the same caliber as Verat.
He surpassed him.
That was the fact he realized in the moment Verat died.
Sion hadn’t only succeeded in sensing killing intent.
He had also succeeded in “emitting” it in reverse and wielding it—and Verat, unaware of that, had no choice but to die.
“Urk!”
“Guh! Uhk!”
Three steps.
With merely three steps from Sion, groans erupted from the bushes where the uninvited guests hid.
“Huuh...”
“Huh, huhh.”
Two of the uninvited guests clutched their throats and chests, kneeling in place or collapsing backward.
The two who managed to move, even if involuntarily, were still better off.
The remaining four stood frozen stiff in the posture of gripping their crude weapons.
With bloodshot eyes bulging wide, they were like statues.
But Sion’s eyes could see that they were trembling ever so slightly.
Paralyzed by the invisible force—the “killing intent” Sion had unleashed.
Swish. Swish.
With successive light motions, the uninvited guests fell one by one without any resistance.
The men stabbed through the throat and heart died without even a scream.
Five men thus breathed their last in the dark forest, leaving one survivor.
“...!”
Sion looked down at the one trembling on the ground face-first like a frog.
A build distinctly smaller than the five he had just killed.
After gazing down at him briefly, Sion indifferently swung his sword to shake off the blood clinging to the blade.
“Urk! Kuhuh...”
As if that were the signal, the one who had been sprawled helplessly finally gasped for breath and tried to rise.
But he couldn’t even stand from his clumsy seated position.
Because in the pitch-black night without even moonlight, icy blue glaring eyes were fixed on him.
“Eek!”
The man—no, the boy who might or might not have undergone his coming-of-age rite—involuntarily let a stream of urine flow between his legs.
It was a good thing he hadn’t eaten properly for days; otherwise, it would have been something bigger.
‘Thirteen or fourteen.’
He looked about the equivalent of a first-year middle schooler in Korea, mixed in with a gang of midnight robbers.
This was the kind of world it was.
Judging from the boy and the dead men’s ragged appearances, they weren’t ruthless true criminals but refugees who had fled from somewhere and drifted here.
Of course, that didn’t make their robbery any less serious.
“...Go. I’ll kill you if I see you again.”
A warning more certain than any threat.
“Eek! Eeeek!”
The surviving boy fled crawling madly without even thinking to compose himself.
The reason Sion let him go was that he alone among the six attackers lacked “killing intent.” By his age and appearance, nine times out of ten, he had been dragged into it by force.
He didn’t kill those without killing intent.
That was the one principle Sion had upheld while living in this violent, barbaric world. Once the boy had completely vanished from sight, he turned around.
It was unbelievable that he had just murdered five men as he returned to the campfire with utterly carefree steps.
The small horse, tense for a moment, neighed as if welcoming its master’s return, but the large black horse remained sprawled by the fire, still pretending to sleep.
But Sion knew the black horse—which had carried him across three generations over the past five years—was only feigning sleep.
“You bastard, sprawling there while your master fights? Maybe I should smack you one.”
The black horse flinched as if it understood Sion’s words.
But the creature slyly stuck out its tongue, going beyond pretending to sleep to pretending it had fainted.
Unlike its loyal sire, this black horse’s cunning was on the level of a fox spirit. Sion chuckled at it and stroked the other horse, which was now rubbing its neck against him as if finally reassured.
“Yellowie, don’t you go mimicking that one. Alright, time to get going. You too, up with you.”
At Sion’s words, the black horse retracted its tongue, smacked its lips, and rose to its feet. Cunning as it was, it obeyed Sion’s commands with absolute loyalty, just like its grandsire.
After packing up and extinguishing the fire, Sion hopped onto the black horse.
Judging from the boy’s fleeing posture moments ago, he was certainly going to run off forever instead of returning to the gang—but Sion wanted to avoid any potential hassle.
Killing wasn’t a pleasant affair to begin with, and especially not now, just one day after his own son’s death.
On a day like today, he might easily turn into a true murderer and slaughter dozens or hundreds without a second thought.
—Live your life.
The life his wife spoke of was not that of a murderer.
“Huu.”
Sion took a light breath and departed the spot with his two horses.
This was the last time in the Sion Dukedom he had built with his own hands. Vowing never to return here again, the immortal departed just like that.
(To be continued)