Chapter 67 - Heavenly Demon (2)

The Apothecary gently closed her eyes. A moment later, her lips parted.

"... If it weren't for you, Death King, I'd still be in a back alley in the slums. All my equipment would have been taken away... Honestly, I can't even imagine what would have happened to me."

She slowly opened her eyes. Behind her glasses, her gaze was far clearer than before.

"Yes, I want to repay you for everything you've done for me. I'll put everything else out of my mind and focus only on making a cure. ... But when I get absorbed in my work, I really don't notice anything around me. I forget my manners, too. I'll probably be terribly rude. Even so..."

"Even so, that's fine." I nodded. "Please, show us everything you're capable of."

This was no time to worry about petty courtesies. What we needed was the future Alchemy Ministry Head.

"... All right."

The Apothecary adjusted her glasses, then turned to the Medicine King.

"Old man."

"Eh? What is it?"

"From now on, please give me your full support."

The Medicine King frowned. His wrinkles were as deep as his stubbornness.

"Support? Suppooort? You insolent little brat. Shame on you! Even a drink of cold water must be offered in order of seniority! How dare a greenhorn tell the great Medicine King to do nothing but assist—"

"Open skill cards."

"... Huh?"

Cards smoothly rose from the Apothecary's hand. One gold card. Three silver cards.

An ordinary hunter would struggle to acquire even one skill, yet she had mastered four. And every one of them was a high-grade skill, ranked B or above.

The Medicine King's eyes widened.

"W-what is this? Are you showing off your skills to me? Bah. Young people these days think skills can do everything. It's a serious problem. True ability, you see—"

The Apothecary spoke.

"You may look at them."

"What?"

"I'm saying you may look at what my skills are."

The Medicine King seemed so taken aback that he couldn't respond immediately.

Of course he couldn't. To a hunter, skills were secret weapons—trade secrets that must never be exposed. Revealing your skills was as good as confessing every last weakness along with your strengths.

In a word, folly. Something stupid and foolish.

"Or shall I just show you myself?"

But the Apothecary didn't hesitate.

"This skill is [Mobile Hospital]."

She turned the card over herself and showed it to the Medicine King.

"It can perform everything from blood tests to EEGs in real time. I can also take out medicinal ingredients I've stored beforehand and use them. However, there's a two-percent chance of misdiagnosis. This one is [Life Diagnostic Report]. It lets me determine a patient's condition down to the genetic level. I combine the two skills to minimize the probability of misdiagnosis—"

"W-wait! Wait a moment!"

The Medicine King finally recovered his wits.

"You little fool! Why are you showing me your skills? What will you do if I spill all this to the Alchemy Ministry or others in the business?"

"It's fine. I promised not to worry about distractions like that," the Apothecary said. "If you want to reveal them, go ahead. But until we finish making this cure, please give me your full support."

"No, I mean, why are you telling me—"

"Because I need you if I'm to shorten the development time by even one day."

"..."

"You can't stand the sight of me, can you?"

The Apothecary looked at the Medicine King. Her gaze was beyond composed; it was cold. She was always flustered, yet now her face was utterly expressionless.

"You're angry that a youngster doesn't know her place and acts so arrogantly, aren't you? It irritates you that someone like me has talent, doesn't it? I have far more years left to live than you, so people will admire me for far longer than they will you. Doesn't that irritate you so much you feel like you're going mad?"

"..."

People often compare human voices to birds. But I could swear that no animal could imitate the Apothecary's voice. If I had to describe it... Yes, it was a voice that brought insects to mind.

A whisper like the sizzling of fire ants.

"If you give me your full assistance this time..."

The Apothecary straightened her glasses.

"I'll give you every medicine recipe I've developed so far. I won't tell anyone anywhere that I created them. Take them. Use them. Tell people you invented the recipes—"

At that moment, her glasses slipped off and fell to the floor.

The old man had slapped her cheek.

"..."

The Apothecary picked up her glasses and silently wiped the lenses with her sleeve. A red handprint remained on her left cheek. She put her glasses back on, then quietly looked at the old man.

He trembled with rage.

"Insolent brat..."

"I'll analyze the zombie virus."

"You'll learn that there's always a heaven above the heavens."

"Please do the things I ask you to."

"The day will come when your pride is crushed and gives off a rotten stench."

"I'll write down what I need and give you the list."

"Someday, you too..."

"Then you will..."

The old man and the woman spoke at the same time.

"Meet someone better than you."

"Find those things and bring them to me."

Then both hunters fell silent.

With the corpse of Wudang's sect leader between them, the Apothecary sat on the left and the Medicine King on the right. When she muttered something, he wrote it down. A colorless atmosphere. The two of them had become more like a still life than a portrait, exchanging only businesslike remarks.

"Death King, I'm sorry, but please leave."

The Apothecary murmured as she brought a scalpel to the corpse's head.

"Your breathing is bothering me. It's very, very distracting."

"While you're out, catch six more zombies and bring them back."

The Medicine King examined the dark interior of the corpse's mouth. With forceps, he pinched its tongue, stained purple and black.

"We need more samples. Children, young adults, and elderly people. One of each sex for each age group. And if I tell you I need any medicinal ingredients, fetch them."

I nodded.

"Leave it to me."

From that day on, we went onto a war footing.

Even time spent eating felt wasteful. Washing was a luxury. Despite the open-air bath right beside them, the Apothecary and the Medicine King didn't bathe. Day and night, the two hunters nibbled on grain-abstinence pills and did nothing but study zombies.

"My... The mood has changed considerably."

The Heavenly Demon looked at our party in puzzlement.

"Are you seeking enlightenment? Such hardworking youngsters."

"Say, aren't you going to cook any more clam soup or that Dori-pal risotto?"

The Murim Alliance Leader sidled up to pester the Medicine King.

"Your skill would put even the imperial chefs to shame. If only the world were still in one piece, I'd appoint you head chef of the great Namgung Family."

"I'm busy. Piss off."

The Medicine King replied without even looking up. He merely reached into his spatial pouch and tossed out a bottle of water.

"If you're hungry, fill your belly with water."

"Ugh."

Was he that disappointed at being deprived of the Medicine King's cooking? The Murim Alliance Leader smacked his lips. Still, he caught the bottle of Bling H2O the Medicine King threw and drank it readily enough.

"You old relic, stop bothering busy people and come along."

"All right, all right. Good grief, my body's been giving me such trouble lately."

The Murim Alliance Leader grumbled wearily.

"Who knows how far those living corpses have scattered today..."

"However far they've gone, could they have traveled a thousand li? Stop your chatter and come out."

"Very well."

Still grumbling, the Murim Alliance Leader left the cave with the Heavenly Demon.

They would be gathering zombies again, just as they had yesterday. To spend the 991st day of the Great War Between Orthodox and Demonic Forces.

A day passed.

The day of the world's destruction drew one day closer.

Another day passed.

A day.

And again, a day.

A countdown.

Days spent merely waiting for destruction.

A world that was nothing more than a music box that had not yet stopped.

"Hmm."

A week.

Exactly one week had passed since we fell into the apocalypse.

That day, the Heavenly Demon looked up at the cave ceiling.

"... We won't be able to go outside today."

A blizzard raged across the world. The wind swept the snow up again and again, until up and down, sky and earth, were indistinguishable.

The world was nothing but a dark snowfield.

For the first time, I learned that white could be dark.

"Well, we have days like this."

The Heavenly Demon shrugged as though it were nothing important.

"It was luck that the weather stayed clear these past few days. At its worst, this frenzied snow fell for more than thirty days. Without sunlight, we couldn't take a single step."

"Then the living corpses will keep moving," I said. "Is that all right? If they go too far, you won't be able to recover them."

"There's nothing we can do then. We lose them."

The Heavenly Demon sighed.

"Three years ago, our Cult's forces numbered a thousand. The orthodox brats that old fellow brought numbered just as many. But as time passed, some living corpses wandered so far that we couldn't bring them back at all."

Of course they had.

Missing corpses. No, not missing—lost forever. Each time a blizzard swept down from the sky, the Heavenly Demon and the Murim Alliance Leader must have lost several more bodies.

"That must frighten you most of all."

"Hmm?"

"When you wake up and go out onto the snowfield, and a living corpse that was there yesterday has vanished somewhere."

"..."

The Heavenly Demon gazed at me silently.

"Do you think I would feel something as paltry as fear?"

Her eyes were ink-black. So was her hair, and even the martial robes she wore.

Dressed entirely in black, she looked as though she were desperately resisting this world that had become a pure white snowfield.

"Yes, I think you would."

"The world truly has been turned upside down. Ordinarily, anyone who spouted such words would no longer have an intact head. Child from beyond the borders, you should count yourself fortunate that the world has fallen."

"You and the Alliance Leader are masters, Heavenly Demon. Your knowledge of martial arts is so profound that I feel apologetic even comparing myself to you."

I quietly turned my gaze. The Murim Alliance Leader lay asleep beside the hot spring.

"But however great a master you are, your internal energy isn't infinite."

"What are you trying to say?"

"When will your internal energy run out?"

She froze.

"You're blocking your cervical point with internal energy. You said you use it for everything—your heartbeat, your breathing, moving your arms and legs."

Hadn't I been told it was no different from controlling swords with energy twenty-four hours a day?

I shook my head.

"However much internal energy you have, you can't keep doing something so extreme forever."

"..."

"I'll ask again. When will your internal energy run out, Heavenly Demon?"

Not long ago, she had said:

「Everyone dies someday.」

Those words had resonance. The resonance of someone who had attained understanding.

There was only one way for a person to truly understand something.

They had to experience it themselves.

"... Truly."

The Heavenly Demon groaned.

"Truly, you are a perceptive child."

"You only have a few days left, don't you?"

"... Let me amend that slightly. You are a damnably perceptive child."

This world.

How would [Chronicles of the Heavenly Demon] meet its destruction?

Thinking about it, the answer was astonishingly simple.

"Once your internal energy runs out, neither of you will be able to move your bodies."

"Yes."

The Heavenly Demon looked up at the sky. Through the opening in the cave ceiling, the blizzard spewed by the sky came raging in.

"First, we'll abandon our toes and fingertips. Then our calves and wrists. Knees. Shoulders. Waist. We'll stop circulating internal energy to them in that order, and the flesh it can no longer reach will eventually rot."

Literal necrosis.

Like a building whose systems shut down one after another when its fuel runs out.

At some point, the two of them would become unable to move.

"The heart. The lungs."

She touched the chest of her shabby martial robes.

"The upper dantian."

Then she tapped the crown of her head.

"Every part except those three will rot. No, we'll let the other parts rot."

"... You already knew."

"That wretched Shaolin monk held out alongside us for a year."

The Heavenly Demon smiled bitterly.

"True to his monkish ways, he passed away seated in the lotus position. At the very end, hmm. Apart from his face, he wasn't much different from a living corpse. His whole body had rotted black, every inch of it... His final words were nothing but 'Amitabha.'"

"..."

"You asked if I was afraid. Yes, I am afraid."

People often compare human voices to birds. But I could swear that no animal could imitate the Heavenly Demon's voice.

"I am afraid."

A murmur like a single flower petal falling.

"I'm afraid of my internal energy running out. I'm afraid of even my vital energy being exhausted. I'm afraid of blizzards, afraid of the sun not shining, afraid that when day breaks, my subordinates—the things that were my subordinates—will have vanished. With every breath I take, I worry how many more breaths I have left. With every beat of my heart, I am afraid, wondering how many more times I'll feel it throb."

The Heavenly Demon sighed.

"I'm afraid that in the end, I won't be able to kill that old man, and that in the end, he won't be able to kill me. I'm afraid the day will come when he and I lie in bed together, unable to move at all. I'm afraid we'll lie there, remain lying there, doing nothing but waiting for our internal energy to dry up."

A meaningless death.

Even the fact that they had struggled to the very end would lose all meaning. They would die. Snow would fall and fall upon a world that had died and vanished, leaving nothing but a colorless landscape painting.

"Ah."

This was the conclusion awaiting [Chronicles of the Heavenly Demon].

The ending of this world.

"The world is such a frightening place."

A day passed.

Our eighth day since falling into the apocalypse.

The day when only two days remained until the world's destruction.

"You demon."

Lying in bed, the Murim Alliance Leader murmured.

"I can't move my body anymore."

The Murim Alliance Leader was smiling.

And he was crying.