Even If the Sky Falls and the Earth Gives Way
Even if the sky collapsed and the ground gave way beneath you...
Even a Buddha, lying down to sleep on a sweltering summer day, would grab a sutra and start swatting the moment he heard a mosquito whining in his ear.
So what would happen if a sound more irritating than any mosquito droned on from dawn to dusk?
"Give it a rest already!!!"
I shrieked in pure irritation and started detonating Blood Orbs one after another.
KWA-BOOM!
The whining puppets crumpled, boneless...
"Haah... about half left now, huh?"
All that hacking had thinned the tentacles that once packed the air around me until bald patches showed through, like a scalp losing its hair. Not that it came free — my arm had been reduced to a rag in the bargain. My skin had cracked worse than drought-baked earth, gone past cracking entirely, and now the flesh was peeling away in shreds...
"Argh, my wrist..."
Along the wrist where something white had begun to gleam through, severed tendons hung dangling in shreds.
What I wanted, honestly, was to fall back on the old hit-and-run — pull out for a turn, recover, then come back in swinging — but there was no telling how good that thing's regeneration might be...
VWOOOOOM-
And that springy, rubber-bodied thing was grinding its nonexistent teeth, fixated on me with relentless malice. Pulling out looked like a tall order. If it caught me wrong, I'd end up like that female knight from some manga I read long ago — so I rolled my eyes frantically, weaving through the bundles of tentacles.
The ones darting for my head, I dodged with a twist of the neck; the ones flying at my body, I lopped off before they landed; and the malicious ones surging for my nether regions, I evaded by hopping about like a frog. Of course, with that many of them — and sabotage on top — I couldn't dodge it all, so I took the strikes aimed at my limbs as they came and kept cutting through them.
"Either way, if this goes the distance, I win..."
But what if that thing turned out to be one of those absurd creatures with immunity warded into its very skin? Rich, coming from me — the man who's had every curse word in creation hurled at him over his own disgustingly unfair regeneration.
How did an ordinary kid, a petty thief with no knighthood, no magic, and no real talent for brawling, bring about the end of the world? He didn't. He just took his beatings, endured, and dragged the whole thing out somehow — and by the time anyone looked, that's what he'd become.
I couldn't fight a long war by soaking up hits like I did back then, but I've lived a long, long time. Losing to some jelly would be too humiliating to live down.
Rrrrip-
...Come to think of it, I could probably live with the humiliation.
At the sound of something tearing loose, I looked down at my right arm and found it hanging dead, no longer taking orders from my brain.
"Well. It lasted longer than I expected. Tch..."
I pried the blade out of my right hand — the hand that had just declared a strike — and was severing the arm, now nothing but a cumbersome ornament, to fling it into the air when—
SHWAAAAAK-
"You... little bastard... don't you know the first rule of the road?! You don't hit a man mid-transformation!!!"
Lopping off an arm counts as transforming too, if you ask me, and this jellyfish thug was jabbing tentacles at me in the middle of the operation. I screamed my head off, but—
VMMMMM-
What was the point of yelling at something that couldn't understand a word of human speech? It just went on humming, flailing its tentacles with everything it had...
Still, once more than half its own tentacles had been sliced away, even it seemed to grasp the danger, and its translucent crimson body began to flicker.
"Strike!!!"
The word left my mouth, and in the same instant, red lightning came crashing down from the cloud-choked sky.
KRA-KA-KA-KA-BOOM!
As countless bolts raked across the jellyfish's body, it began to shudder violently.
Did it really think I'd stand by and watch it power up for its next phase? Like hell. Not after it had pulled the cheap move of attacking a man mid-transformation.
Either way, those were direct hits. They had to hurt. I'd taken that technique once myself, and my whole body tingled for days — it's a stolen move, after all.
Truthfully, I'd forgotten all about it. The face of the man who used it in the mist popped into my head, and that's the only reason I remembered. Whether that deserves a thank-you...
Some tower lord or other, I think. Now, what was it he said to me...?
"Did it truly have to come to this... Could you really find no better way..." — was that it?
He spoke like a sage, words flowing smooth as a mountain stream, but behind the scenes he was a son of a bitch who bought up illegal slaves — children, nothing but children — for his human experiments. And then, when his own death came due, out came the lectures. My methods were too harsh. Revenge only begets revenge. On and on...
The nonsense was so breathtaking my memory had apparently filed it away and lost it.
Well, they do say: hate the man, but not his craft.
It had supposedly even hurt the Spirit King once, and seeing it bite just as deep into that jellyfish thing — some distant relative of his, by the look of it — I'd say that tower lordship wasn't won playing patty-cake...
The price was the minor detail that my left eye can no longer see what's in front of it.
Yes, things escalated out of control. No, I don't regret it. I'd taken what I was given and paid it back with interest. A trifle like this, I can grin and bear...
"HAAAH-HAHAHAHAHA!!!"
Trailing tears of blood, I laughed and hacked away at the tentacle bundles with everything I had.
"Rain coming, is it? Why else would this old back ache so."
The Dang Clan's Financial Hall Master was supervising the construction site again today. But the workers had already met with a few accidents, and with the sky hanging gray and heavy, the whole day felt faintly ominous...
FWUMP-
Someone had toppled over behind him.
"Didn't I tell you all to be more caref... huh?"
Assuming yet another laborer had tripped while hauling something, he turned his head — and there, sprawled on the ground, lay the very last person he expected.
Why on earth was one of the men who'd gone to Nanman with Muyeong collapsed in front of the main gate...?
Tap- tap-
"Hey. You. Sleep here and your face will freeze that way. Up you get."
"Mu..."
"Mu? Did something happen to Muyeong?"
"Mu... mu..."
"Mu, mu — what about Mu?! Out with it, quickly!!!"
"Water... some water, please..."
With those last words, the man's breath rattled out entirely, and the Financial Hall Master heaved him onto his back and sprinted for the Medicine Hall.
And then the wretch who'd been hovering between life and death not a minute earlier snapped awake the instant they arrived and started gulping down water.
If that was all it took, he could have come on his own two feet...
At any rate, once Dang Giyeong had caught his breath, he began to talk.
"Haah... theyoungmasterisfightingamonstertothedeathinNanmanandtheBeastPalacebastardsmightstabhiminthebacksohetoldmetobringtheClanHeadortheHallMasterssoIranlikemadtoSichuanandnowIhavetogetbacktoNanmanasfastasIcan!"
"Wh...what did you say?"
The Financial Hall Master was still wearing a question mark at the torrent of words when—
"So. Muyeong is fighting a monster in Nanman, the Beast Palace may strike at his back, and the Clan Head or one of the Hall Masters has to go. That's what he's saying."
The Medicine Hall Master, somehow deciphering the flood yet again, translated for the room.
"So old age has finally stopped up your ears, has it?"
He really could have skipped the part where he snapped at the man who'd just bailed him out.
"Setting that aside — this 'monster' in Nanman. You mean that Beast Palace Lord fellow?"
"No, sir. I mean a monster, plain and simple. A jellyfish bigger than the entire clan compound is sucking the marrow right out of people."
"A jellyfish...?"
"And the Palace Lord is already dead, apparently."
"Hoh... For now, I'll go pass word to the Clan Head."
Just as the Medicine Hall Master hurried to leave at this report of something deeply amiss—
clatter-
At the door of the Medicine Hall, Dang Murin stood with her face drained white, the pouch of hidden weapons slipping from her fingers to the ground...
"MUYEONG!!!!!"
"Hey! You pass that along to the Clan Head! I've got to catch her first!!!"
Dignity forgotten entirely, the Medicine Hall Master flung himself forward, bellowing as he chased the woman fleeing on light-foot technique.
At those words, the Financial Hall Master tucked Dang Giyeong back under his arm and made for the Clan Leader's Hall...
"I'll go."
"So will I."
In the blink of an eye, the Dang Muyeong Rescue Squad was formed.
Clan Head Dang Jihwan; the Enforcement Hall Master, the only one who could half keep pace with him; and Dang Giyeong, serving as their guide. As for the Green Heaven Squad Leader, half corpse that he was, it was settled: the Clan Head would simply sling him over a shoulder.
Or so they thought...
"Murin, why are you... again... haah..."
They had barely cleared the clan grounds when Dang Murin came sprinting desperately after them from behind, and the Enforcement Hall Master smacked a palm to his forehead...
"Go home..."
"I'm coming too! I said I'm going! If you don't take me with you, I will raise hell!!!"
Faced with a grown wife and mother rolling around on the ground throwing a tantrum, Dang Jihwan finally shot off down the road with a man tucked under one arm and a woman under the other.
After all that cutting, the once-countless tentacles lay nearly all severed, strewn and rolling across the ground.
"Phew..."
I let out a sigh and reached up to wipe the sweat from my brow—
"Ah... right. No right arm."
Below it, only the hollowed-out shoulder twitched.
Wiping my brow with my left hand instead of the arm that had gone off to the sky somewhere, I looked ahead. The jellyfish was humming sullenly, glowing red with resentment.
"What a chore... Let's finish this, you damned thing."
Even as I cleared away the things still popping out of the mist, I raised my eyes to the sky and spoke.
"Manifest..."
The crimson clouds filling the heavens began to gather into one. The fresh blood soaking the ground rose into the air as well, streaming upward to mingle with those clouds.
And when a cloud so vast its height could no longer be measured had taken shape...
KYAAAAAAAH!
With a shriek loud enough to split ears, a colossal serpent shouldered through the clouds and revealed itself.
No... could that even be called a serpent?
Where its long body should have borne a snout, there was no face at all — nothing but a hideous maw that looked fit to grind down everything in creation...
"This had better be worth an arm, at least..."
The serpent plunged for the earth, intent on tearing apart that monster — a jellyfish no longer, but something closer to an octopus now.
KWAAAAAAAAAANG!
The impact shook the earth to its axis, and a wind too fierce to keep my eyes open against came howling through.
Through the one eye I had left, I watched and asked:
"Did that do it...?"
I narrowed my eye, checking its condition...
vmmm-
Its enormous body was wrecked, barely holding its shape, and unlike before it gave off only a faint, feeble hum.
tk-
So I staggered closer, meaning to cut its throat for good.
tk-tk-tk- tk-
"Go quietly, you damned thing."
vmm-
It no longer had the strength even to spew mist — its body did nothing now but vibrate weakly. I tightened my grip on the blade to cut it down...
shleck- shleck-
Just as the only sound left in the world was the ring of my blade—
KWAAAAAANG!
The ground gave way.
"Wh—AAAAAH!!!"
The earth collapsed beneath me without warning, and I lunged desperately for a tangle of tree roots—
"F...UCK!!!!!"
But I had no hand left to grab them with.