Chapter 74 - The One Who Gathers Deaths (3)

“My liege...”

Hungry Ghost cautiously looked up at me.

“The deaths of 112 people are too much. Even now, in just a few days, you have grown so thin that I can scarcely recognize you...”

“Why? Has your loyalty grown so much that you're worried about my health?”

Hungry Ghost hesitated. She seemed to be wondering how to answer.

Would it be better to add a little flattery? Or to reveal her true thoughts outright?

“... If you disappear, my liege, I will disappear as well.”

Hungry Ghost parted her lips.

“I will no longer be able to live in my little paradise. My life, my memories, my purpose—everything will vanish. Everything rests on you, my liege. Because I fear for myself, I fear for your health as well.”

“I like your honesty.”

The corners of my mouth lifted.

“So? Is life treating you well these days?”

“Pardon...?”

“You get to live in Estelle's village now. The people you cherished more than your own life are back, too. How have you been?”

After gaining exclusive rights to the twentieth floor, I had let Hungry Ghost roam free in the village. Except when I had work for her, like now, I intended to let her stay there indefinitely.

Hungry Ghost answered with a tense expression.

“I have been... well.”

“Nothing unusual happen?”

“Unusual, you say... Ah.”

Hungry Ghost blinked.

“There was a time when people called hunters barged in. They said the secret to the Death King's sudden strength, a treasure hidden by the Five Great Guilds, must be here... But the one called the Witch whom you brought, my liege, and the hunters following her stopped them, so it did not become a major disturbance.”

Just what I expected from the Black Dragon Guild. Their after-sales service was reliable.

“The petty lords of the neighboring kingdoms no longer bother us, either. They are suffering at the hands of the nomads they brought in to attack us... And quite apart from that, both the empire and the temple declared my village a holy site at the same time. Now and then, lizardmen and elves visit to leave gifts...”

Things in the other world seemed to be working themselves out, too.

“There is, however... the matter of my having lost all my powers.”

“Hmm.”

“Sick people come after hearing rumors of me... And since the declaration of the holy site, they have been joined by pilgrims hoping for miracles, in particular. I do not know what to do with them... For now, the hunter priests who followed the one called the Inquisitor, whom you also introduced to me, are caring for them...”

“I have something in mind, so don't worry.”

Specifically, I planned to build the Apothecary a new apothecary shop on the twentieth floor.

'She said she'd only accept new customers through me.'

Once this expedition was over, the Apothecary's position would be secure.

'I should make sure everything is properly organized on my end, too.'

With patients coming in constantly, she would be able to gain experience with all sorts of illnesses.

'She won't be able to handle the workload alone. She'll need staff. I could assign Hungry Ghost as her assistant, or have her take on hunters who aspire to become pharmacists as apprentices. The shop will naturally grow as that happens...'

It would not take long for the new shop to be recognized as a branch of the Alchemy Ministry, and for that branch to become its headquarters.

'I have to look after my own people.'

I smiled.

“Anything else?”

“Nothing else in particular... Ah, Dajena—Dajena is a child in my village—seems to like the tteokbokki the hunters brought. And Garchov, an old man who tends the orchard, shared his fruit with the Black Dragon hunters guarding the village, so in return, the Black Dragon hunters brought fruit from your world...”

The wind blew.

Snow flurried, and moonlight quietly seeped into the drifting flakes. Hungry Ghost's voice flowed like the snow. I listened to her story beneath the moonlit sky all the way to the end.

Hungry Ghost bowed her head.

“... That is how things stand.”

“So life is treating you well.”

Hungry Ghost answered cautiously.

“Yes. Life is good.”

I nodded.

“The people in this world deserve a better life, too.”

“...”

“Hurry and gather the corpses.”

Golden hair spilled below her shoulders as Hungry Ghost bowed her head. A voice escaped her lowered lips.

“I shall obey.”

3

There is a saying about putting the right person in the right place.

Summoning Hungry Ghost and entrusting her with gathering deaths turned out to be an excellent decision.

A fallen constellation. The one called the [Demon King of Autumn Rain], who had once destroyed another world, however briefly. She knew how to harvest death.

“I shall first seek out villages and cities with government offices.”

Thousands of skeletons moved at Hungry Ghost's gesture.

“Where officials work, there should surely be maps. They may be crude, but they should be good enough to compare with the terrain and put to use. I intend to piece those fragmentary maps together and trace out remote farming and fishing villages.”

Zombies began arriving on the third day of the search. These were not the corpses of martial artists trained in martial arts. They were ordinary farmers and common people. The corpses of people who had been nothing more than that.

“I shall bring you the corpse of a mother who could no longer bear to watch her children starve, and hanged herself along with them.”

The skeletons' bones were white. Those white bones carried corpses in a procession through the middle of the snowfield. It was hard to distinguish the white of bone from the white of snow. And so, from a distance... it looked as though the corpses were walking toward me of their own accord.

“And the children who opened their eyes in the morning to find their mother's corpse. I shall also bring the corpses of children who must have cried by her side and died as wild grass withers.”

The procession of corpses continued.

Deaths were lined up.

“The villagers who would have cursed the dead mother for failing in her duty as a parent.”

“One who hid at the bottom of a well to escape the epidemic, only to never climb back out.”

“A prisoner who must have starved to death in a cell, without even a chance to flee.”

Hungry Ghost selected and selected again, presenting the poor to me.

Like a subject offering only the most precious tribute to a king.

When a week had passed, Hungry Ghost once again knelt on one knee in the snow.

“I have brought them, my liege.”

I looked across the snowfield.

GROOOAN...

UHH, UUUUGH!

KEEE...

Countless deaths stood arrayed before me.

The corpses struggled, their limbs held by skeletons. Some faces were old. Others were young. Hunger made no distinction between men and women, young and old.

“... Good.”

I loosened my tie. I took off my suit and discarded my underwear. In the dark night, standing with my bare flesh exposed, I ordered the skeletons.

“Let them go.”

At that instant.

The moment the skeletons released them, the 112 zombies lunged. Instinctively. Toward the strong scent of flesh.

Toward where I stood.

“That's right.”

I smiled.

“Come, all of you!”

CRUNCH!

A young corpse leaped at me. It tore into my calf with its teeth. Just as terrible pain began climbing up my calf, it was cut off midway. An old corpse had ripped into my thigh. The pain that erupted in my calf broke off at my thigh, then surged up again, twice as intense.

“...!”

I probably screamed. But I could not hear that scream, because a corpse tore apart my ears.

My lips were eaten. My tongue was eaten. Unable to hear, unable to speak, I could only watch countless shadows burrowing into my body.

[You have died.]

I looked up at the night sky.

The moon was pure white, like a land where snow fell forever.

[Recreating the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]

The night sky an old man looked up at for the last time was exactly like this one.

He was a fisherman who had spent his entire life on the river. When a living corpse bit his finger, the old man did not panic. He calmly steered his ferryboat.

["If I die aboard the boat, I won't cause the world any trouble."]

On the river within sight of the village, the old man's ferryboat gently bobbed.

He lay down in the boat. He was comfortable, as though lying in a coffin. He would not mind if the waves overturned the boat and killed him. He would not mind dying as if falling asleep... To the old man, being born on the river and dying on the river was happiness.

The moon he looked up at for the last time was tranquil.

[Recreating the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]

How had the world changed so much? There was no understanding it.

The young prefect pondered this as he walked along the city wall at night. Originally, he had not even been a local clerk. He had been a scholar who memorized a few lines of text and ran a village school. But the prefect had died, the prefect's clerks had died, and the clerks' underlings had died.

Death followed death, as if one were asking after the next. At the end of those inquiries stood him.

["My lord."]

A soldier approached and spoke. He, too, had not originally been a soldier, but a man who lived off the woman who ran a tavern. Though he was quarrelsome, he was quick-witted enough to be useful.

["What is it?"]

["The granary is emptying. In a fortnight, there won't be a handful of millet left in storage. The fishermen occasionally bring in fish, but it isn't enough. What should we do...?"]

["Start by reducing the grain rationed to the elderly."]

The young prefect spoke.

["The living-corpse soldiers are countless. We must preserve those who can still fight. Reduce the food given to the elderly and children to one-third."]

[Recreating the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]

The prefect before him was ruthless. Sometimes, he seemed colder than a living corpse. The soldier occasionally wondered where the bookish fellow who had done nothing but recite the classics at the village entrance had learned such resolve.

["There will be considerable resistance..."]

["Halve the food given to the young as well. Some will lose more and some less, but if everyone shares in the reduction, it will be bearable."]

["Won't there still be complaints?"]

["I'll go hungry first."]

The prefect's answer was brief.

["I'll fast completely. If I, their leader, eat nothing at all, even the complainers will lose their ground."]

["... Will you be all right?"]

["This place won't hold out much longer anyway. What difference will a few days without food make?"]

The moon seen from the city wall was serene.

[Recreating the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]

["At this rate, we're all going to starve to death!"]

A child shouted urgently. She was a girl, a beggar belonging to the Beggars' Sect. Now that the distinction between rich and poor had vanished, she had become the leader of the children her age.

["That bastard lord says children shouldn't even eat. He's telling us not to live!"]

["Then what should we do...?"]

["Even if we die, we should eat something first. Then at least we'll be good-looking living corpses."]

The girl huffed.

["There's a recipe I learned in the Beggars' Sect. It's called an earth cookie. Just like it sounds, it's a mud cookie."]

["A mud cookie...?"]

["As long as you have mud, you can make as many as you want."]

Her eyes shone.

["Listen carefully! Those of you who can swim, keep catching fish. Don't go handing them over to the adults. We'll share them among ourselves. Everyone else, go to the riverbank and scoop up some soft mud."]

["What are you going to do with it?"]

["I'll show you."]

[Recreating the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]

The children scooped mud from the riverbank. Grains of sand were mixed into the earth. They put the mud in a sieve and strained out the pebbles over and over.

["If we roll this mud up and put it on a mat..."]

The little leader worked her hands busily. She rolled the mud into a ball and tossed it onto the mat with a thud. Then she spread it out wide, as though smoothing plaster.

["Good, that's it!"]

["That's it...? What's it?"]

["All we have to do is dry it in the sun. Then we'll have mud cookies."]

The children were incredulous.

["That's just dirt baked in the sun!"]

["How is that a cookie?"]

["Be quiet. It's a secret recipe passed down in the Beggars' Sect. Just watch."]

The little leader took out a pouch. It contained salt. Salt had always been precious, but now that rations had stopped, every grain was like a speck of gold. The girl mixed a little salt into the mud dough.

["There!"]

Half a day later, the mud was bone-dry.

["Now they're ready. Try one each! But be careful when you eat them. They won't taste good if you take a big bite! Make them last and nibble just a little at a time."]

Still skeptical, the children bit into the mud cookies.

[Recreating the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]

["... It's surprisingly edible."]

One child nibbled at a mud cookie with their front teeth, like a hamster.

[Recreating the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]

["I like that it's salty."]

One child licked a mud cookie with wide, round eyes, as though licking ice cream. The child's saliva soaked its edges.

[Recreating the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]

["It tastes awful..."]

One child simply looked ready to cry.

The little leader chuckled.

["It's all right. As long as we can eat it, that's enough. We have to get all our own food from now on. We'll eat earth cookies normally, and fish whenever we catch any. Got it?"]

["Yeah..."]

The children soothed their starving stomachs with mud.

The human mouth was a deceitful thing. The children's gullets accepted the salty earth as food.

For the mud to go down, its saltiness had to trick the tongue. So the children did not bite straight into the mud cookies. They licked them, tasting the salt.

["Don't just lick them! You'll lick all the flavor away. You have to nibble as you lick."]

Every day, the children kneaded mud by the river.

["Huh?"]

The riverbank.

["Look over there. A corpse."]

It was the edge of the very river on which an old man had drifted away in his ferryboat.

The old man born on the river had died on the river. He had considered that happiness. He had thought that dying with his ferryboat as his coffin would keep him from troubling the world.

There was something he had failed to consider. Drowned corpses sometimes washed ashore.

If dying in the river had been his good fortune, washing up on this bank rather than the opposite one was his misfortune.

And everyone else's misfortune, too.

["I think the old man drowned."]

["Poor man..."]

["Was he a fisherman?"]

With fear and curiosity, the children approached the old corpse.

["Huh?"]

It was a dark dawn.

["W-wait!"]

["What?"]

["It's a living corpse! It's not just a dead body!"]

Smelling the tender, fresh scent of the children, the corpse stirred.

["Run!"]

Some children escaped.

["Ah..."]

And one child did not.

[Recreating the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]

That was the end.

[Recreating the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]

That was how a riverside fortress, cut off from the imperial capital and from the surrounding villages, fell. The old man died. The last lord died fighting. The soldier died trying to slip out through the city gate. The little leader died shielding her younger sibling.

[Recreating the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]

They had tried to live.

[Recreating the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]

They had struggled.

[Recreating the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]

Because they had tried to live, they had endured hunger.

[Recreating the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]

The children's fingers, scooping mud from damp ground by the river. Their hands, spreading mud dough wide across a mat. Even their fingertips, tightly gripping dried mud cookies.

[Recreating the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]

The deaths of 112 people.

Not one of their gestures was anything but hunger.

[Trauma recreation complete.]

[Confirmed that the subject's sense of self remains intact.]

[Ending the penalty.]

I slowly opened my eyes.

“...”

The snowfield was silent.

In the quiet night, I murmured to myself.

“I thought I might at least learn how to boil tree bark...”

Reality surpassed my imagination. In a world approaching destruction, was tree bark not enough to even count as trauma? Driven into a corner, human beings could eat even mud.

“Yes. That can happen, too.”

I stood and dug into the snow, wrapping my bare hands in aura. I dug and dug until I reached frozen ground beneath the perpetual snow.

It was the first earth I had seen since arriving in this world.

“Let's see...”

Digging up ground that had been frozen for years was not easy. Again, I had to use aura. I dug out a handful of earth and heated it together with the perpetual snow using aura. Just as if I were boiling soup. After a long while, the grains of earth began to soften.

It was, quite literally, muddy water.

I picked out the sand and pebbles one by one. I followed what I had seen in the dream. I kneaded the mud into a ball. Taking off my suit jacket to use as a mat, I spread the lump of mud wide across it.

“Hmm.”

Time passed. The morning and midday sun baked the mud cookie. It looked just like a dalgona candy. I carefully lifted it in both hands.

“... Thank you for the meal.”

I tried nibbling it.

A dry crunch sounded inside my mouth.

“...”

I licked the edge of the mud cookie. Its texture softened a little. But it was only soft against the tip of my tongue. When I took the crumbled cookie onto my tongue, grains of earth stuck to the roof of my mouth. My whole mouth felt dry and gritty.

“...”

After a little while, I got the hang of it. This was not food to chew with my molars. I had to nibble it with my front teeth, then swallow a little at a time. I slowly ate away at food that held nothing but the sun's warmth and the smell of earth.

Hmm.

“... It tastes awful.”

I bit into it.

“It really does.”

I nibbled at it.

“It tastes truly awful.”

I swallowed.

“...”

My shoulders trembled.

My heart trembled.

“...”

An emotion I could not put into words seized my entire body. Was it anger? Sorrow? Perhaps it was hatred. Human life had surely sprung from the earth, so why could we not eat that earth? Why were the smell of earth and the texture of dirt so wretched?

Why?

“...”

Before I knew it, my right hand had clenched tight. An emotion that might have been anger, might have been sorrow, or perhaps hatred had knotted itself in my hand.

Then I understood. Emotions that could not be spoken were, by their nature, things to be grasped in the hand.

Not to be spoken, but to be swung.

Martial arts were simply the act of swinging the handful that remained in one's hand.

“...”

Let me go back.

I drew the holy sword and aimed its tip at my throat.

Let me go back and show the Heavenly Demon my sword. No, it was not my sword. It was the sword of the old man, the soldier, the lord, and the children who had died without names.

I had never read a martial arts novel, so I knew nothing of the profound principles of yin and yang and the five elements. If my martial arts held any subtle truth, it was only their screams. If my blade held the law of heaven, it was simply the gestures of human beings heaven had abandoned.

Because it was resentment and rancor, it was demonic.

Because it was only a heaven looked up at with resentment and rancor, it was the Demonic Heaven.

I drove the holy sword into the center of my throat. Carrying the deaths of 112 people in my heart, I regressed. What I had to do was no different from the previous run.

I asked the Heavenly Demon to accept me as her disciple.

Just as before, she spent a night considering it.

After that night, she set me a test.

“What is the test?”

“There.”

The Heavenly Demon pointed to the bottom of the pit.

“I have thrown one living-corpse soldier down there. He was a young talent of considerable promise in our Cult, a supreme master who made quite a name for himself in the martial world. Defeat that living corpse. Then I shall accept you as a disciple of the inner household.”

“However,” the Heavenly Demon added.

“Fight while feeling hunger. Though you fight the living-corpse soldier, only hunger must occupy your heart. Only the pain of hunger. I will not permit any other feeling or thought to intrude upon your mental imagery. Can you do it?”

I did not answer.

There was no reason to force what could not be spoken into an answer.

Instead, I quietly jumped into the pit.

GROOOAR!

A living corpse rushed at me.

I regarded it with impassive eyes.

“...”

With the scent of mud in my mouth.

The feel of earth in my gestures.

And nothing but the children's hunger in my heart.

Divine Art of the Demonic Heaven.

First Form.

Flowing Sword of Death by Starvation.

I swung my sword.

The first strike severed both legs.

The second cut off both arms.

The third took the living corpse's head.

Not one of those gestures was anything but hunger.

The one who had been a supreme master of the Demonic Cult lay crumpled at the bottom of the pit, silent.

“...”

I looked up.

The Heavenly Demon's mouth hung open. She stared at me with the same shock she had shown upon first seeing our party—perhaps even greater shock. Her gaze wavered. After her gaze, her heart would begin to surge.

The meaning in life she had thought entirely lost.

She had seen it begin anew before her eyes.

She had been made to see it.

“Heavenly Demon.”

I slowly parted my lips.

“Which death shall I show you next?”