Carpeng Subjugation (5)
My little sister died, and I became a wastrel.
I lived as a wastrel.
I chose it for myself.
I honed my abilities so I could grow stronger.
I built my power. I gathered experience.
It was nowhere near enough.
So I began by killing myself.
I threw away my pride and pressed my forehead to the dirt at a noble’s feet.
I became the dog of a corrupt aristocrat.
Next, I killed beasts.
On my master’s orders I slaughtered every animal the commoners owned.
Stripped of everything, those commoners became the noble’s slaves.
I killed people.
On Erden’s orders I killed the very noble who had ordered me to butcher the beasts.
I killed my own master.
The noble’s children, left alone, became devotees of Erden.
I killed the innocent.
Again, it was Erden’s command.
I killed commoners who supposedly carried the seed of corruption—people who had not yet committed any crime.
I killed them.
Their entire families were branded heretics and executed.
Finally, I killed a magic beast.
A new species.
A beast that wore a human body.
A beast that had stolen a human body.
So I cut it down.
It screamed in a voice nothing like a human’s.
I severed its arms.
Tears almost like a human’s spilled out.
I tore off its legs.
Human blood sprayed.
I split its belly open.
It cried out for its family.
I cut off its head.
It was my master’s order.
It was the only path to strength.
It was a magic beast.
So I killed it.
I earned Erden’s recognition.
I was granted the right to take the promotion trial held in Erden’s temple.
Beneath the holy grace of the goddess, the trial began.
And there—
In the world of my mind—
The Habron of the past was recreated.
Peaceful Habron.
The Habron where my little sister had lived.
The condition for passing:
Massacre every villager.
With my own hands.
With the sword my sister had given me as a gift.
Slaughter everyone, including her.
But I could not stop.
I had to grow stronger.
I had to have my revenge.
I touched my right eye and forced myself forward.
First I killed the village gatekeeper—the man who had first handed me a loaf of bread.
Next I killed the uncle next door—the man who had first given me work.
I killed the village adventurer—the man who had taught me how to fight.
I killed the village chief—the man who had taken me in.
I killed the old woman who always cooked warm soup for me.
People.
People.
A person.
A person.
I killed them.
And at the very end—
Even my little sister.
With my own hands.
I cut her throat in a single stroke so she would feel no pain.
No tears came.
No guilt stirred.
It did not hurt.
The trial ended.
Acknowledged by many, showered with cheers and applause, I became a Platinum-rank adventurer.
I awakened my Unique Ability.
The power to cut whatever I can see.
A truly ridiculous ability, as if mocking the man who had only one eye left.
But I was glad.
For the first time since my sister died, I laughed.
I lived on, recognized by others, making a name for myself across the continent.
Then I learned the true face of Erden—fragments of this world’s truth.
Everything I had leaned on betrayed me.
I discarded my humanity.
I discarded my past.
I discarded my heart.
And the place I arrived at was the bottom of an abyss where no light entered and no salvation existed.
I fell into despair.
The path I had walked was denied.
Everything collapsed.
Having lost it all, I filled the hollow inside me with hatred.
Hatred toward Carpeng.
Toward Erden.
Toward this entire world.
But I was an endlessly small and frail existence.
Erden was a power no one dared defy.
The world itself was something I could not even look upon—something words could never measure.
I lived sunk in dejection, waiting for a powerless death to come.
Then I met Heinzel.
I met Hermila.
People who shared the same past, walked the same road, and met the same end.
A tiny but precious spark of hope flared to life.
Platinum adventurers who had been betrayed by Erden and glimpsed the fragments of the world gathered in Alrba.
And there I met a little girl who reminded me of my sister.
She was blind.
She had no mana.
Her build, her temperament—nothing about her suited an adventurer.
The only proof she could claim the title was the greatsword she dragged behind her—larger than she was herself.
I snorted.
I knew exactly what the adventurer’s path was like.
I thought she would be dead soon enough.
I followed her, ready to save her if something unexpected happened.
But the girl was strong.
She cut down countless magic beasts alone.
She ignored every minor wound and hunted only for the beasts’ lives.
Unbothered by the blood that soaked her, she killed for a day and a half without a single sip of water, without a single change of expression.
The hunt went on.
When it finally ended and a long time had passed, she noticed my presence.
She sensed me from a distance her eyes could never reach—far beyond what even Qi Sensing should have allowed.
Yet she simply continued walking in silence.
Perhaps she knew I had no intent to attack.
Or perhaps she was certain she would win even if I charged her.
Of course, I assumed the former.
Until yesterday, that was what I believed.
And now—
My thoughts had changed.
Through Qi Sensing I watched the girl face Carpeng.
Perhaps, without my Unique Ability, I would have lost.
I focused my Qi Sensing and burned her image into my mind, watching her “hunt” Carpeng.
Then a wet, tearing sound exploded and blood sprayed across my face.
“Khuh… kuh, ugh…”
The priestess’s voice, thick with pain, reached me.
I spread my Qi Sensing.
Multiple arrows had pierced her body at once—every one of them aimed at me.
While healing me, she had checked Carpeng and protected me.
I had to rise.
I had to lift my sword.
But my wretched body refused to allow it.
Without sinking into self-loathing, I thought of the best I could do right now: find the source.
I forced my Qi Sensing wider.
Agony like my skull splitting open flared through me.
My whole body shook.
I ground my teeth and endured.
And I found her.
A woman in a hooded robe.
A woman who freely commanded the wind—not with mana, but with something else entirely.
Arrows flew.
From her hands.
From beside her.
From behind.
From above.
From every direction.
They were aimed at me, seeking my vital points.
But the priestess took them instead.
Seventeen arrows buried themselves in her body.
Blood poured from the holes in her belly, and when that was not enough it burst from her mouth and nose as well.
I forced my body to twitch.
I filled the vanished sensation with rage.
I drowned the pain in hatred.
I gathered mana and drove it into my heart, forcing the blood to race faster, heating my body.
My fingertips began to move.
At the same moment, the hooded woman drew a familiar horn from her robes.
The Horn of Frenzy—the cursed artifact that had once destroyed Habron and later plunged Roholan into peril.
She raised it to her lips.
The motion in my fingertips spread through my entire body.
A sound like the sky itself tearing open rang out.
Carpeng’s enraged howl answered it.
I forced myself upright and charged forward.
Carpeng’s claws punched through the girl’s stomach.
I wrenched the sword free from the ground.
Blood-qi erupted, ready to tear the girl’s body apart.
I spread my Qi Sensing.
I can see it.
Then I can cut it.
I swung.
To kill Carpeng.
The Unique Ability I had obtained by discarding everything activated.
The blood-qi that met my sword aura scattered.
Dark-red blood burst from the girl’s mouth.
My sword snapped.
Arrows from every direction locked onto me—onto the girl, onto Heinzel.
I swung the broken half of my blade again and knocked the arrows aside.
Carpeng’s claws.
Blood-qi.
Arrows.
Flying rubble.
Thick murderous intent.
Droplets of blood.
My own life.
I swung at all of it.
I unleashed everything.
I shook it all off.
Carpeng’s arm swept toward me.
The distance was too close.
I barely managed to bat it aside with my sword.
The blood-qi that followed smashed into me.
I tumbled across the ground in a wretched heap, then immediately rose and swung again, deflecting arrows to shield the girl.
I swung once more and protected Heinzel.
The sword broke.
It shattered.
Even the hilt crumbled to powder and scattered.
Carpeng’s attacks.
Dozens of arrows.
Death itself crashed down on me.
At the same instant, a warm power wrapped around my body and blocked everything.
It was the priestess.
Arrows still embedded all over her body, she ignored her own wounds and cloaked me, the girl, and Heinzel in Divine Power.
An arrow sank into her leg.
Her belly.
Her back.
Her arm.
It pierced her entire body.
Yet the Divine Power protecting us never wavered.
The girl staggered to her feet.
She poured a potion straight into the wound in her stomach, gripped her greatsword, and charged the hooded woman.
In an instant the woman’s head flew.
The girl did not stop.
She crushed the body, burst it, shredded it to pieces.
Carpeng’s attack turned on me.
Its blood-qi turned on the priestess.
And the girl lunged at Carpeng, batting the strike aside.
Even when her flesh tore open.
Even when her bones broke.
She rose again and faced Carpeng.
Even when her fingers snapped and she could no longer grip the greatsword, she smashed her hand against the ground, forced the fingers to bend, and seized the hilt once more.
She fell, was slammed down, was trampled—and still she rose.
She kept fighting.
Screaming with every ounce of spite, she continued the battle.
She walked forward in sheer desperation.
But the fight could not last long.
Her body already ruined, the girl was no match for Carpeng.
She collapsed.
She rolled across the ground.
And still she rose.
She rose and blocked the attack aimed at the priestess.
She rose to protect.
To protect the priestess she shoved death itself aside and kept standing.
Not for revenge.
Simply because she wanted to protect.
That was why she rose.
“Because I wanted to protect…”
I had forgotten, drowned in hatred.
I remembered why I had wanted to grow stronger.
I had been trapped in a nightmare, unable to wake.
I remembered why I had craved power.
Lux, hidden in Carpeng’s shadow, rose in my mind.
I had wanted to protect.
My fortune.
Habron.
The world I lived in.
Warm spring days.
My little sister.
That was why I became strong.
That was why I wanted power.
“Khuhuh…”
Only at the very end do I understand.
If Lux could see me now, she would laugh for a long time.
From my waist I drew the old, ordinary sword I had never once unsheathed since reaching Platinum.
The sword with which I had killed beasts.
Killed people.
Killed villagers.
Killed my sister.
And in the end killed myself—
Yet the sword that had once been my milestone, that had lit the path of an adventurer, that my sister had given me with a bright smile.
I drew it.
I redefined my world.
My past.
Everything.