Chapter 148 - Prologue (1)

1

The Great Library of Myriad Thoughts.

The shadows cast by its bookshelves overlapped and faded, forming an intricate web.

“I... do not know.”

The Heaven-Slaying Star’s voice wandered through it.

“It is difficult. Difficult to comprehend. Have I killed so many? Are there truly so many lives that vanished because of me? Even taking responsibility for a single death is impossible, yet all those people living in so many worlds...”

With fumbling hands, he took out his worn journal.

Just as Kim Yul had left the Heaven-Slaying Star behind as a trace of his existence, the Heaven-Slaying Star had kept a journal even as the memories of his life faded.

“Goddess of Protection, Old Man Secluded in the Depths, Follower of the Blinded Eye.”

These were the constellations he had killed.

He quietly recited the names, reddened by the lines struck through them.

“Great Serpent Sprouted Amid Seven Noises, Stork Singing of the Cosmos, Witch Who Died at Frosty Dawn, Lion Dreaming of Eternal Annihilation, Corpse-Poison Flower, Moon That Swallowed the Moonless Night, Yellow Dragon Dwelling in the Great Lake...”

The names poured forth. There was no sign that the recitation would end.

Only after naming every one of those hundreds of constellations did the Heaven-Slaying Star slowly look at my face.

“... I do not know. I cannot know. But when I entered Kim Yul’s body, when he felt outrage at the world and spat curses at it, I sympathized with him. I agreed with him. Kim Yul wanted revenge against those who had driven him so far.”

He fell silent for a moment.

“So that is it,” he murmured.

“I, too, deserve to suffer the vengeance of those worlds.”

SNAP

The Heaven-Slaying Star closed his journal.

“Even if I ended my life, that would not be sufficient atonement. Eternal suffering. Those worlds would want nothing but for me to suffer forever. Yet merely suffering would have no meaning... How must I suffer to apologize to those who are already dead?”

I nodded.

“Librarian.”

As though he had only been waiting for me to call, the Shut-In Librarian peeked out from behind a bookshelf. His cheeks were flushed.

“Welcome back! Unlike the previous apocalypses, I could not personally peep at you this time. I have only just finished hastily reading the newly added side story in [Tales of the City of Heavenly Ascent]. Ah, truly...”

“Enough. Come here.”

“You grow sterner with me by the day, Death King...”

The Librarian feebly flew over.

“There, I am here. What would you have me do? If you wish, I can—”

“Give me [The Epic of Lefanta Aegim].”

“Ah... I did say, ‘If you wish, I can,’ but are you aware? Every book in my collection is one of my sacred relics. Of all living beings, I alone can craft them. You must not treat such precious books as though you can simply demand this and that...”

“Of course, I shall give it to you,” he added, handing me the book.

“Heaven-Slaying Star.”

“Yes.”

“Your story is written in this book. From the moment you first fell into another world and met the [Goddess of Protection], through becoming Lefanta Aegim and then the Heaven-Slaying Star. Your entire life is recorded here.”

“...”

“You lost your memories, but they aren’t lost forever. Recover them. Once again.”

Silence settled over the library. The Heaven-Slaying Star gazed wordlessly at [The Epic of Lefanta Aegim]. The Librarian let out a soft “Ah” as he watched us.

The constellation had immediately understood what I meant.

The Heaven-Slaying Star had not.

“By [once again], you mean...”

“Yes. Just as we looked into Kim Yul’s past a moment ago.”

“... From the beginning?”

“From the beginning.”

“You are telling me to look back over my life, hundreds of years of it, from the very beginning?”

“What you did, what you thought, which worlds you trampled, and what lives inhabited those worlds.”

“...”

“Remembering is the first step in everything. ‘Do not forget.’ Kim Yul staked his life on those words. You will have to stake your life on them, too.”

Stillness.

“I understand.”

Stillness.

“I judge your words to be right.”

And silence.

“...”

The Heaven-Slaying Star took [The Epic of Lefanta Aegim] from me. To accept it, he had to put his journal away. In place of a journal pieced together day by day on separate pages, he now held a life chronicled from beginning to end.

“Indeed,” he murmured, holding the book.

“Merely repeating one’s own life is enough to turn the world into hell. Does every person carry a hell of their own?”

He turned his head. The director sat there.

“Class president.”

Called class president, the director did not answer at once. She could not. Decades lay within that silence.

“... Yes, Mr. Kim Yul.”

Called Kim Yul, the Heaven-Slaying Star likewise could not answer at once. He did not. Hundreds of years lay within that silence.

The decades one person had endured and the centuries another had discarded settled into the library’s quiet air.

“Kim Yul thought he wanted to forgive you,” the Heaven-Slaying Star said.

“And I share his feelings.”

“...”

“I want you to be forgiven.”

The director closed her lips.

She closed her eyes. But could I really say, “The director closed her eyes”? Probably not. She had already lost control of her body. She had not closed her lips; her lips had closed. She had not closed her eyes; her eyes had fallen shut.

“...”

A moan, barely more than a breath, slipped between her lips. “Thank you.” She could have said that. “I’m sorry.” She probably wanted to say that. But she held back every word. What she could not hold back spilled out as moans.

“If I...”

The moans were not words, but fragments.

Yet somehow, I could see the picture those fragments wanted to paint.

“If I had just... a little more...”

If I had lived just a little better.

If I had held just a little more power.

If I had been just a little smarter as a child.

“...”

At that moment,

I realized something. A tremor like lightning pierced my entire body. The director’s tightly pressed lips, her closed eyes, the backs of her hands braced against the floor. Her aged skin. Her trembling arms. Looking at her whole body bent over, I realized something.

‘Ah.’

The director was screaming in sorrow.

‘What I must bear witness to.’

There are people screaming in this world.

‘What I want to bear witness to.’

The world is crowded with beasts and humans, but among them are people screaming alone, like islands. Sometimes their cries reach my ears. Sometimes they come into my sight.

I simply want to bear witness to those screams.

‘There is a person here.’

My Demonic Heaven.

‘A person lives here.’

Whoever first stitched together the fabric of the Divine Art of the Demonic Heaven, whichever believer first preached the doctrine of the shadows—they surely, without a doubt, felt what I was feeling now.

That person had been angry. Had grieved. Seeing the hungry, seeing the thirsty, seeing nine paths of life and nine kinds of death, they had felt that [this must be borne witness to].

“...”

I want to bear witness.

I want everyone to know.

I want to engrave the fact that a person is here, that they exist, upon this world as a wound that cannot be erased.

‘Do not forget.’

I want to hold this sight of the director within my Demonic Heaven.

And not only that.

The dances of the children who smiled at me in the Infernal Mansion. The voice of Hungry Ghost, who howled at the sky in the middle of a village, clutching the corpses of a mother and her babies. The figure of Master dancing with her blade across a snowfield whose name had been erased. Raviel. Raviel herself.

‘I must not forget.’

The first form of the Divine Art of the Demonic Heaven embodied hunger.

‘Now I must put my own Demonic Heaven into it.’

The children’s dances into the first form.

Hungry Ghost’s screams into the second.

Master’s sword into the third.

Raviel’s sacrifice into the fourth.

The director’s silence into the fifth.

‘I want to hold them all.’

Could I? Me?

When embodying hunger alone was so difficult, could I truly hold a person’s life—no, the lives of many people?

‘Even if I must devote my entire life to it.’

An aspiration took root.

My life had found its purpose.

‘Let me bear witness that a person lived here. That a person died here. Let me bear witness to how they lived and how they died. Let me hold the noises of beasts and the screams of people. And if that person laughed, even the vibrations of their laughter.’

But.

‘Not yet.’

There were still things I had to finish here. Many things. Reworking the forms of the Divine Art of the Demonic Heaven from the ground up was beyond my current level, and even with tremendous mental exertion and effort, I might not succeed.

‘... Yes. Let’s not rush. For now, let’s do what I can.’

I turned my head.

And looked at our voyeur.

“Librarian. No, Hamustra.”

The Librarian’s shoulders trembled. He had been panting as he watched the Heaven-Slaying Star and the director, and now he flinched.

“M-my true name! How embarrassing! Please call me by my epithet.”

“Let the Heaven-Slaying Star read [The Epic of Lefanta Aegim] whenever he wishes. It doesn’t need to take the form of a stage clear. Allow him to peep into it, just as you peep into worlds.”

“Ah. Ahem. Hmm.”

Breathing heavily, the Librarian struggled to gather his thoughts.

“To do that, I would have to share my authority... I would have to make him an apostle. Ahem. Some constellations produce apostles in droves without hesitation, but I am rather... Apostles feel awkward, one might say... They are not to my taste...”

Of course someone whose very epithet was [Shut-In Librarian] would never make subordinates or friends. He only employed odd servants like the bookmark maids.

“You don’t want to?”

“It is not that...”

“I may have taken him in through Rebirth of a Hundred Ghosts, but the other Heaven-Slaying Stars are puppets copied through [Puppeteer’s Parade] anyway. Is there any difference?”

“Ahem, hmm. There is no difference, but...”

“You choose.”

“Choose...?”

“Until now, you’ve loved the Heaven-Slaying Star’s story. But to put it in your terms, he has now reached a branching point. There are two routes.”

“A branching point.”

“Yes.”

I met the Librarian’s eyes.

“Route One. In this route, the Heaven-Slaying Star never met me. He has no memory of meeting me. He remains on the fiftieth floor as usual. Once he accumulates a week’s worth of memories, he leaves to hunt constellations.”

The puppet route.

The route in which the Heaven-Slaying Star carries on [Puppeteer’s Parade] forever.

“Route Two.”

And here stood the Heaven-Slaying Star who had met me.

“The Heaven-Slaying Star now knows Kim Yul. He remembers him. And he will go on living as he slowly retraces the life of Lefanta Aegim, beginning with Kim Yul.”

It would be hard.

“He will possess his self within the book and walk the exact same path he traveled over hundreds of years, all over again.”

It would be painful.

“But I’ll be on that route, and so will the director. He doesn’t need to swallow his entire life at once. Slowly. He need only swallow as much as he can digest, one mouthful at a time. It’s all right to rest along the way.”

But that was the Heaven-Slaying Star’s life.

Something that would someday, at last, become Kim Yul’s life.

“Choose the route you want for the Heaven-Slaying Star.”

“...”

The Librarian looked at the Heaven-Slaying Star.

The constellation’s silence did not last long.

“Heaven-Slaying Star. And you who raised the Death King.”

With a gentle smile, the Librarian spread his arms toward the Heaven-Slaying Star and the director.

On this day, someone’s epilogue must have ended.

“Would you perhaps be interested in working here as librarians?”

And someone’s prologue began.