The Cemetery of Corpses
“Ugh…”
It’s cold.
Did the boiler break down again today?
At the biting chill seeping beneath my backside, I slowly opened my eyes.
The sight that met my gaze was…
A corpse lying there with a knife embedded in its body.
Dark, dried-up blood.
Limp, dangling arms, and even flies buzzing over the remains.
“…!”
Hic-
I was so startled that I reflexively clamped a hand over my mouth.
A dream?
Or did I die and fall into hell?
……Naturally, trash like me belongs in hell, but still.
That thought lasted only a moment.
The instant I saw the maggots crawling on the corpse, my body froze solid.
Ugh.
Forcing down the nausea rising to my throat, I scrambled away from the spot.
Squelch.
I ran through the alleyway like a madman, stepping through filthy puddles. Dark red stains were dried onto the walls, and black, sludge-like water flowed slowly through the gutters.
After passing through that hellish landscape, a waterfront came into view. I gasped for air and dropped to my knees by the water’s edge.
The moment I looked down at the water to wash my face—
“…Huh?”
A face the size of a fist. Lustrous black hair that looked like it had been plucked from the night sky. Eyes that shone like rubies.
It was definitely the character I had created just a moment ago.
No. It wasn’t a character anymore…
It was me.
The appearance I had painstakingly customized because I wanted to be loved, and the Charm stat I’d cranked up to the extreme because I must have lost my mind.
The result was breathtakingly beautiful, even to my own eyes.
“…Insane.”
A chill ran down my spine. If this were my previous life, such beauty would have been a blessing. But in this Dark Fantasy world where people died as casually as breathing? Especially in the back alleys, known for being the filthiest and most dangerous place of all?
It was closer to a curse.
Reflexively, I grabbed a handful of mud and smeared it onto my face without hesitation.
Once.
Twice.
I covered it until my features were barely visible. I wanted to look so filthy that people would avoid me just by catching a glimpse.
I messed up my hair, which had been sparkling like the night sky, and rubbed mud into it as well.
Smear, smear.
Still, I was anxious. No matter how much I hid my face with mud or disheveled my hair, my slender shoulders and the small but stubbornly prominent chest were clearly that of a young girl’s body.
I picked up a piece of tattered cloth lying nearby and wrapped it around myself. Then, I hunched my back as much as I could. Holding my breath, I carefully looked into the water again.
Reflected there was, without a doubt, a hunchback suffering from a skin disease. The beautiful girl who could have bewitched the world just moments ago had left no trace.
[Charm stat has decreased to 10 or below. You will now attract disgust from those around you.]
After gathering information for a few days, one fact became clear. This place where I first opened my eyes was the Belnoa Slums. It was the final destination for the human dregs discarded by the city.
Murderers. Rapists. Junkies. Human traffickers.
Simple crimes didn’t even qualify as a business card here. The rumors even said that prisoners brought here would weep and beg to be sent back to prison instead.
And Belnoa’s notoriety did not disappoint. The moment I rummaged through a pile of trash and found something barely edible—
“Hey.”
A boy with a scar across his face. He looked to be about fifteen. But his expression was one no fifteen-year-old should ever have.
“Who gave you permission to be in this sector?”
Thud!
Before I could answer, a foot kicked me square in the stomach.
“Gack…!”
The breath left my lungs. I collapsed to the ground, clutching my stomach. Then, as if they had been waiting, the other children swarmed me.
Thud.
Thwack.
Countless kicks rained down on my tattered rags. They kicked my head. They stomped on my ribs without mercy.
“Shit. You unlucky hunchback bastard.”
“You smell like absolute shit.”
After committing such acts, the children were beaming. They looked like they were having the time of their lives.
I curled into a ball, shielding my head as best as I could.
“P-please… spare me…”
My voice was a mere whisper. Just like in my previous life, no one listened. They were excessively cruel for their age. ……Or perhaps, it was the natural result of having to be cruel to survive?
Because I had hunched my back and lowered my body as much as possible, I couldn’t offer even the slightest resistance. Of course, even if I hadn’t foolishly dumped my Strength, Stamina, and Agility stats to the absolute minimum, I wouldn’t have been able to fight back anyway…
Eventually, I was pushed to the most secluded corner of the back alleys. Unlike the outside world where people were overflowing with energy just to survive, this place—
This place was like a graveyard.
An old man leaning against a wall, just breathing. A woman collapsed, her eyes glazed over from drugs. A man whose body was oozing fluids, looking like he would die at any second.
Everything was broken.
“*Cough!*”
The man sitting right next to me suddenly vomited blood and collapsed. He shuddered all over, and then his movements stopped.
…He was dead.
It was so quiet that it didn’t feel real. The people around us just glanced at him once, as if they were used to it, and went on their way.
A place without even the slightest will to survive. It felt like looking at a massive mass grave.
I was terrified. Would I die like that, too?
…I don’t want to.
I gritted my teeth. I had entered the game I loved; I couldn’t let it end like this. I would survive, no matter what it took.
I had definitely sworn that to myself, but…
I had forgotten one thing.
The person who saved the world thousands of times wasn’t ‘me.’ It was only the character I had created. In reality, I was just trash with no ability and no will.
In the end, I was the same in this world. I couldn’t change at all.
And so, little by little.
Little by little, I was inching toward death.
It was the moment my eyelids were slowly drifting shut.
“Ugh, goddammit… Why the hell do I have to search in a place like this?”
Rough cursing reached my ears. Beyond my fading vision, the hem of a black nun’s habit swayed slowly.
.
What caught the nun’s eyes was a hunchback covered in filth from head to toe. The spine was bent to a grotesque degree, and the skin revealed beneath the tattered rags was a mix of dark red wounds and oozing fluids. To anyone, it was just common trash from the slums.
“…To think I was told to find trash like this.”
Seraphina let out an annoyed sigh. Despite being a nun, she didn’t particularly believe in God. She had simply risen to one of the highest positions in the church thanks to the divine power she was born with.
That day was the same as any other. The moment she was dozing off in the front row of the chapel, pretending to pray while drooling—
Flash.
Along with a light that threatened to blind her, a voice echoed in her mind.
『Find the child in the slums who looks up at the world with the lowest perspective.』
At that moment, the people around her began to murmur.
“It’s a divine oracle from the Goddess…!”
“To hear an oracle that’s hard to hear even once in a lifetime!”
‘Shit.’
But to her, it was just a bothersome order.
‘Looks up at the world with the lowest perspective?’
Shit. What kind of nonsense is that?
In the end, having only understood the word ‘slums,’ she pulled out a cigarette with a familiar motion and headed toward the slums.
She had a fierce expression but snow-white skin. She had an undeniably beautiful appearance, and above all, a violent physique that couldn’t be hidden even under her habit.
If she headed into the slums? Surprisingly, nothing happened. Naturally, that was because she had brought dozens of holy knights with her.
No one could even meet her eyes. The small fries didn’t dare touch her, and the notorious criminals capable of handling the holy knights didn’t want to cross the church just by messing with one woman. Above all, Seraphina was notorious for having a personality like a dumpster fire.
“Hey. Do you guys happen to know who the person who looks at the world with the ‘lowest perspective’ is?”
She shouted in the middle of the slums.
“…….”
“…….”
Naturally, everyone just stared at her, unable to even answer. Seraphina clicked her tongue irritably.
“Ha.”
She turned her head to look at the holy knights.
“Everyone, move out.”
She spat out a short command to the knights. It was a simple sentence, but… the results were anything but simple.
Thud-
“Aaaargh!”
Thud-
“Y-you crazy bastards!”
The holy knights began to beat the people they saw without mercy. They didn’t discriminate by age or gender. They trampled the people collapsed on the ground with their boots and grabbed them by the hair to slam them into walls. Screams and groans echoed through the entire street.
But there wasn’t a shred of guilt on the knights’ faces. It made sense; people who crawled into Belnoa weren’t ‘people.’ They were nothing more than trash.
While the ‘information gathering’ continued for a long time—
“W-wait!”
A boy jumped up, as if he knew the answer. At first, he had been standing with a cocky posture, but after seeing the adults around him getting beaten like dogs, his face had turned deathly pale.
“I-I think I know!”
“Hmm. Really~?”
Seraphina raised an eyebrow, looking intrigued.
Click. Click.
She approached the boy, licking her lips with her tongue as if savoring a meal. The boy should have been trembling in fear, but… strangely, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was just too beautiful. Especially… her physique.
The boy hurriedly lowered his head, his face flushing red.
“A-a hunchback!”
“…A hunchback?”
“Y-you said the lowest perspective! There was a guy with a bent back!”
A moment of silence passed. Seraphina’s brow twitched.
“…This crazy Goddess.”
Did she mean his perspective was low because his back was bent? At the ridiculous wordplay, divine power began to leak from Seraphina. Divine power was supposed to be a warm and comforting force. But Seraphina’s divine power was different. It was as cold as a blade and as sharp as a suffocating breath.
The people around her trembled in terror. Seraphina exhaled a long trail of cigarette smoke and asked.
“So, where did that hunchback go?”
“H-hieee…!”
The boy shouted, nearly sobbing.
“W-we chased him into the back alleys!”
“Ha.”
Seraphina scratched her head irritably. The back alleys of the back alleys. It must be the Simyo (Cemetery of Corpses). It was a place where the terminally ill gathered, meaning it was a place for the dying. Since he had been chased there, he was either already dead or half-dead.
Still, since the oracle had been given, Seraphina had to find him, even if it was just his corpse.
“…Shit. What are you doing? Why aren’t we moving yet?”
Seraphina grumbled irritably and set off toward the Simyo.