Chapter 72 - The One Who Gathers Deaths (1)

1

What word in the world goes worst with [zombie]?

I know it’s a strange question. But this world had been overrun by zombies. Finding myself suddenly training in martial arts by fighting them, I naturally had no choice but to give zombies some thought. And just now, I had realized which word went worst with them.

"Grrrraaagh!"

That word was [palm blast].

"Urrr, aaaagh!"

The zombie in black martial robes brought its hands together and fired a palm blast.

I’m not joking. It really happened.

Let me say that again. A [zombie] that had been a martial artist in life let out a monstrous shriek and fired a [palm blast] at me.

"This is fucking insane..."

WHOOSH!

The palm blast effortlessly swept my body back. I went flying into the air like a wooden stick. Everything that had happened already had me losing both my capacity for disbelief and my mind, but unfortunately, it wasn’t over yet.

"Uoooaaagh!"

The zombie kicked off the ground. Wondrous footwork. A fluid lightness technique unfolded. Its body shot into the air as though it were filled with helium gas. In an instant, it flew right up to my nose.

Holy shit.

"Hey! Wait, this really isn’t fair!"

I hastily swung my holy sword. But before I could cut the zombie down, a voice halted my blade.

"Enough! Do not swing your sword at random."

It was the Heavenly Demon’s voice. She was watching my fight from above the pit.

"Did I not tell you? Recall hunger, the suffering of those who starved to death. Dwell on nothing but the sensation of starvation. If you merely swing your sword, the Divine Art of the Demonic Heaven is nothing but an empty shell."

"B-but!"

The zombie opened its maw right in front of my face.

CRUNCH!

I barely twisted away from its teeth. With no time even to break my fall properly, I tumbled to the ground. Had dodging it made it even angrier? The zombie roared and lunged at me again.

"I’m not particularly hungry right now!"

"You fool."

The Heavenly Demon shouted in frustration.

"Does the absence of red before your eyes prevent you from picturing red in your mind? Does not being hungry now prevent you from reviving the sensation of starvation?"

"Grrrraaagh!"

Even while the Heavenly Demon spoke to me, the zombie kept slashing its claws without pause. One touch from those claws and I was done for. I would be infected with the zombie virus too, becoming Kim Zombie in the truest sense.

CLANG! CLANG!

The zombie’s claws struck my sword with terrifying force. I couldn’t bring myself to attack and was entirely occupied with defending. It was absolute agony.

"If you cannot, it is because you are not yet familiar with the sensation of hunger. Your belly is stuffed to bursting. One who learns the Divine Art of the Demonic Heaven must be able to summon sensations at will!"

The sensation of hunger.

The memory of starvation.

"Recall the longest you have ever gone hungry. Chew over the sensations you felt then. Where were you? What did you most wish to eat? How long did you starve?"

"The longest I’ve gone hungry was three or four days..."

"What? Three or four days?"

The Heavenly Demon was incredulous.

"... You mean to say that the longest you have ever starved in your life was a mere three days or so? Impossible. The world has long since fallen into turmoil, and poor harvests come with every passing season. Unless you are the child of an illustrious family, how could you have gone hungry for only three days?"

"Th-the lands beyond the borders where we lived were much more prosperous than the Central Plains..."

Of course the Tower was more prosperous than a Murim full of wandering martial artists. Whatever else it was, it enjoyed modern civilization. There were probably plenty of hunters who had never gone hungry for two days or more.

"Ah. Hah. Tsk, tsk, tsk."

The Heavenly Demon sighed.

"We cannot even understand one another. Hunger is the most urgent sensation. It is a suffering that will not let you skip even a single day, a pain no person can refuse. People live, by their very nature, to appease their hunger. The hunger felt by the Son of Heaven is no different from the hunger felt by the lowliest commoner. If you do not even know this, how will you comprehend the Divine Art of the Demonic Heaven?"

Come on.

I’d lived as an F-class hunter for over ten years and gone hungry plenty of times.

Back in the outside world, I’d even counted how many rice cakes came in a serving of spicy rice cakes and bought them only from the shop that gave me four extra.

"Enough."

The Heavenly Demon turned her back.

"The fault is mine! I allowed myself a moment of hope, but you were nothing more than smooth talk after all."

I was at the bottom of an enormous pit, so her retreating figure quickly vanished from view.

CLANG! CLANG!

Barely fending off the zombie’s teeth and claws, I shouted after the Heavenly Demon, who had already gone far away.

"Heavenly Demon!"

There was no answer.

"Heavenly Demon?"

Still no answer.

The Heavenly Demon was a martial artist who never backed down.

"Please wait a moment! For God’s sake, starving isn’t some badge of honor! Does it make any sense that I can’t learn martial arts because of that? Huh?!"

The palm-blasting zombie opened its maw wide.

Ah.

"Motherf—"

CRUNCH!

[You have died.]

[You will regress twenty-four hours into the past.]

"—ucker!"

Back one day in the past, I stomped my feet. During the regression, I’d seen the palm-blasting zombie’s skill cards, experienced its trauma, and received system confirmation that the subject’s sense of self remained intact, but none of that shit mattered right now.

"I’ve still lived through more than my share of hardship!"

I fumed.

Anger. The drive to win.

Those two emotions alone burned in my heart as red and blue flames. They did more than burn; they blazed.

"Wow."

The attendant spirit was perfectly relaxed beside me.

"She’s teaching you the thoroughly traditional way. Well, she’s passing on a unique secret technique, so that’s fair. Zombie, you know what they say. If you try to get everything without doing the work, you end up getting worked over—"

"Fine. So that’s how it’s going to be!"

Ignoring the attendant spirit, I left the hot-spring cave.

"Does she think acting like that will scare me into giving up? Not a chance. I’ve burned to death before! I’ve fucking died with my head getting roasted first! Does she think I can’t die of hunger?"

"Uh..."

For once, the attendant spirit looked flustered.

"Zombie? What’s wrong? Hey, don’t do this. Forget that Heavenly Demon woman or whatever she’s called and just learn swordsmanship from me. As teachers go, I’m much more forgiv—"

"If she wants me to starve, then I’ll damn well starve!"

"Shit."

The attendant spirit muttered.

"This is bad. He’s lost it. Ah, when he’s pissed off, this crazy fuck really can’t see anything else... There goes another few dozen days..."

From that day on, I entered the Realm of Hell.

I fed my companions a lie: "I’m going to find an item we need to clear this stage." Then I left.

Alone, I went as far from the hot-spring cave as I could and holed up in a snowy mountain.

I did nothing. I simply stayed there.

"You lunatic..."

Did he know what I intended to do?

The attendant spirit looked at me with utterly disenchanted eyes.

"You’re just going to sit there until you fucking starve to death, aren’t you? Right?"

"Yes. What about it?"

"Oh, Lord."

The attendant spirit lamented.

"Everyone in the neighborhood needs to know what a fucking nutcase he is, not just me. Oh, Lord! But I’m the only one who knows. Oh, Lord. Dying and becoming a ghost is my greatest regret. My greatest regret."

So noisy.

"Zombie. No, Gongja. Please, I’m begging you. I don’t mind you getting pissed off and throwing yourself into training, but what did I do to deserve having to stand beside you and watch the whole time? Huh?"

"Oh, I said you’re being noisy."

"Let me ask you one thing. How many days do you plan to last?"

I sat in a small cave in the snowy mountain. It was unlike the cave where the Heavenly Demon and the others were staying. Naturally, there was no hot spring and no grain-abstinence pills. It was nothing but dark and cold.

"I don’t know. For starters, I need to make it past 112 days."

"What?"

"I saw it in the Heavenly Demon’s trauma. She once lasted 111 days without eating anything, just circulating her energy and regulating her breathing. So I’ll last at least 112 days."

"You goddamn motherfucking raw-fish son of a..."

The attendant spirit unleashed a stream of curses for roughly a minute. But it was pointless. No curse he uttered could damage my psyche. I had already settled into the lotus position.

"You couldn’t last over a hundred days even if you tried!"

The attendant spirit shouted.

"Look at the weather. It’s cold! Fucking cold! You’ll freeze to death right now if you don’t wrap yourself in aura. How the hell are you going to keep circulating aura for a hundred straight days? No matter how hard you try, twenty days will be your limit."

Apparently deciding that curses weren’t the answer, the attendant spirit was trying persuasion.

"Besides, Gongja, lasting more than a hundred days isn’t even in the realm of hunger anymore. You’ve never starved for over a hundred days, have you? If you haven’t, don’t talk like you know."

"And have you?"

"Damn right. Back in my younger days, I tried fasting with some lousy monks, so I know. On some days you feel like you’re starving to death, but most of the time you don’t even feel hungry! That’s not starvation. It’s just mental discipline. Mental discipline!"

"Then there’s our answer."

I spoke calmly.

"I can starve for fifteen days, then keep repeating only the fifteenth day."

"..."

The attendant spirit’s mouth opened and closed.

"Say what?"

"I won’t eat anything for fifteen days. I’ll hold out just until my hunger peaks. Then I’ll kill myself and keep staying on day fifteen. My hunger will stay the same, too."

I looked at the attendant spirit.

"I’ll repeat that until 112 days have passed. What do you think? My aura won’t run out, and I’ll keep feeling hungry. It’s the perfect solution."

"You... crazy bastard..."

The attendant spirit was appalled.

"Just learn from me... Don’t take some weird cult leader as your master. My martial arts are better, you know? If you absolutely need a master, learn from me. What the hell is driving you to do something that fucking insane...?!"

"I’m going to learn the Divine Art of the Demonic Heaven perfectly."

My heart blazed.

"Do you know why the Heavenly Demon despaired of the world? Do you know why this world, [Chronicles of the Heavenly Demon], came to an end? Because she felt there was no point in living any longer."

When the Murim Alliance Leader lay bedridden, the Heavenly Demon had murmured to herself.

「The entire world has become emptiness.」

That was the end. If you thought of a world as a work of fiction, those were the final words written on its last page.

Meaninglessness.

Nothing a character says has any meaning anymore. Whether they move, go somewhere, or feel something, none of it can hold any meaning. Even if hundreds of lines of dialogue stretch on. Even if thousands of lines of description run rampant. None of it matters.

It simply becomes no different from blank paper.

Then the work dies, and the world dies with it.

It perishes.

That was probably what the Librarian meant by [discontinuation].

"..."

I did not want this world to perish that way.

I absolutely did not want the character called the Heavenly Demon to end like that.

"... Living like the Flame Emperor would be easy."

I looked outside the cave. A white snowfield stretched before me.

"I’ve got overpowered skills, after all. I’m the best there is. If I win, it’s all thanks to my own ability. If other people aren’t as good as me, it’s because they’re idiots. There’s no need to care about idiots, so I’ll only tackle stages that suit me. Whatever happens, I’ll sneer and be cynical..."

Remaining still in the lotus position, I circulated aura throughout my body.

"That does look cool, sure."

And I began.

"Cynicism isn’t childish, but people who live by cynicism are."

I starved.

"Speaking of what’s right is childish, but people who live by what’s right aren’t."

I starved for one day.

"I’m human, too. I have to live."

I starved for two days.

"Then the answer to how I should live is obvious."

I starved for three days.

I starved, and starved some more.