Chapter 9 - The Truth Behind the Muttering (3)

4

"Get me back to that old man right now!"

The attendant spirit went absolutely berserk.

My rented room was cramped enough already. It was an inhumane place for even one person to live, and now a ghost was flying around in it, too. Human rights simply did not exist here. Would you understand if I said it felt like a three-meter-long giant mosquito was buzzing around?

"Oh, for fuck's sake! Even if I wanted to send you back, I couldn't!"

"You said you copied me with your skill. Then you ought to be able to cancel it! Ever heard of a refund? A refund! What kind of world doesn't give refunds these days?"

"I'm telling you, I can't cancel it!"

I explained how I had ended up copying the attendant spirit. But even after hearing the whole explanation, the ghost refused to listen to reason. He kept demanding that I send him back to the Sword Saint and so on.

"Boo-hoo! Old man Markus! My disciple! Your master has been kidnapped! Your one and only master has been kidnapped by some loser bastard!"

The ghost even flipped upside down in midair and started bawling.

"Oh, what a worthless disciple. This tragedy happened because that brat Markus ignored and scorned his precious master! I told him over and over to revere his master as he would heaven, precisely because I feared this day would come."

"Excuse me..."

This was ridiculous. Any fear I'd felt at seeing a ghost for the first time in my life was long gone. Terror? What was that? No matter how frightening a ghost looked, if it made this much noise, a headache would come first.

"Can we please just live in peace and quiet, hmm?"

"Live, my ass. I'm already fucking dead!"

"Then please be dead quietly."

"Well, would you look at this absolute motherfucker. Telling a ghost who's already miserable about being dead to die again! Everyone, come look at this bastard! We've only just met, and there's nothing he won't say!"

"Wow."

My mouth fell open. What was this? Today was the first time I'd ever seen a ghost, but it was also the first time I'd encountered such an excessive talker... No, such a fucking talker.

Only now did I understand why the Sword Saint had kept muttering to himself in the tavern. Right. Thinking back, he'd muttered constantly, but what he'd actually said was repetitive.

["Shut up."]

["Stop making so much noise."]

["You're too loud. I'll handle it myself, so leave me alone."]

Ninety-nine percent of his muttering had been telling someone to shut up because they were too loud.

From the outside, all that mumbling had made him look mentally ill...

"Of course he'd keep muttering, with a ghost like this attached to him..."

"Huh? What was that? Did you just bad-mouth me to my face? How old are you? You should be treating me as your elder, and instead you brazenly insult me right in front of me?"

"Damn it."

My shoulders slumped without my realizing it. The future looked utterly bleak.

"I'm going to have to avoid the Sword Saint for the rest of my life. Of all the skills I could get, why did it have to come with a ghost like this?"

"Huh? Avoid the old man? What the hell are you talking about?"

The attendant spirit tilted his head.

"Where would you find a hunter as kind as old man Markus? He's my disciple, but he's a real stick-in-the-mud. Oh, but never mention his grandson or granddaughter, all right? He's normally very mild-mannered, but he loses his shit whenever those little ones come up."

"I'm already well aware."

I sighed.

"You know that skill the Sword Saint has? What's it called? Anyway, the one that displays how many murders someone has committed."

"Oh, Detective's Insight? That skill is fucking trash."

The attendant spirit answered immediately. So the official name of the Kill Count Skill was [Detective's Insight]. The ghost seemed to know every one of the Sword Saint's skills by heart.

"What about it? It's barely useful for anything beyond figuring out whether someone's an assassin. And a high kill count doesn't necessarily mean they're an assassin, either."

"4,091."

"Hmm?"

"The kill count floating over my head. It's 4,091."

The attendant spirit looked incredulous. His entire face scrunched up. Somehow, a ghost had a wider range of expressions than a living person.

"What's with this kid? Is he nuts?"

"Another day with you, and I really might be. You're that loud."

"No... You're a complete beginner."

The attendant spirit's face grew a little more serious.

"A beginner among beginners. From the looks of it, you haven't even mastered aura. How could someone like you kill 4,091 people? I doubt I killed that many in my whole life, even while clearing the Tower up to the ninety-ninth floor."

"Because I didn't kill 4,091 people."

"Huh?"

I shrugged, then explained everything step by step.

"Here's what happened. See, the only person I actually hunted down was one very bad bastard who would later be known as the Flame Emperor..."

I told him that the Flame Emperor had murdered me. That, by a stroke of heavenly luck, I'd copied a regression skill. That if I simply stayed where I was, I had no way to take revenge on the Flame Emperor.

"..."

That I'd decided to regress more than four thousand days.

That I'd carried out that decision.

"... What?"

The attendant spirit, who had been listening quietly, gaped.

"You killed yourself over four thousand times? To get revenge on him?"

"Yes."

"..."

The attendant spirit fell quiet. Until a moment ago, he'd looked incredulous, but that had changed. He studied my face with a look of deep contemplation. He was so solemn that I wondered whether this really was the same ghost who had been making enough noise to shake my tiny, two-pyeong room.

"Hey."

After a long silence, the attendant spirit spoke.

"What is it?"

"What's your name?"

"Kim Gongja."

The attendant spirit let out a thoughtful hum.

"Gongja. Why did you choose old man Markus, of all people?"

"Sorry?"

"Why did you decide to copy the old man's skill first, right after finishing your revenge on that Flame Asshole?"

"Isn't that... obvious?"

I felt uneasy. I didn't understand the point of the question.

"He's the number-one-ranked hunter in this era. I should get the strongest person's skills first."

"So you can get stronger as quickly as possible?"

"Yep."

"... And you're answering my questions honestly because there's no risk of the information leaking anyway. The skill card says nobody but you can perceive me. It's completely safe. Right?"

"Well, of course."

Silence settled over the single room again.

"Hmm."

The attendant spirit drifted through the air around me. He floated to my left to glance at my face, then to my right to measure my height. His expression was incredibly serious. I frowned, wondering what on earth he was doing.

"Let's see. Hmm, his build wouldn't be half bad with some conditioning. Incredible tenacity, too. A fair desire to improve. And he's got enough sense to use his fucking head... Hmm, I see. Hmmm, with material like this..."

The attendant spirit muttered to himself.

'What's he talking about?'

From what he said, this ghost seemed to be the Sword Saint's master. Master and disciple alike were experts at talking to themselves.

"Hey, Kim Gongja."

The attendant spirit glided right up to my face and spoke.

"Yes?"

"Show me how you hunt monsters."

5

I killed a few trash mobs.

"Satisfied now?"

There was nothing to do holed up in my tiny room anyway, so I headed to the hunting grounds as soon as dawn broke. In fact, since dying at the Sword Saint's hands had sent me back one day, I had to kill Yoo Suha again today. I had several reasons to go out.

"Just as I thought..."

The attendant spirit nodded.

"My guess was right."

"Your guess?"

"Mm. When I was alive, they called me the Sword Emperor."

It was early dawn. The attendant spirit's low voice spread over the deserted hunting grounds, where nobody was out and about yet.

"I'm not from here. From your perspective, I suppose you'd call it another world. Anyway, a Tower just like this one appeared back home, and I conquered it faster than any other hunter from my world."

"I wondered where you were going with this. You're just bragging?"

"Yep."

The attendant spirit chuckled.

"Well, I failed to clear the hundredth floor in our world in the end. Your card says so, too, right?"

It did.

+

[Sword Constellation]

Rank: A+

Effect: A native of another world. He cleared his world's Tower through floor 99, but failed with floor 100 before him. His lingering resentment prevented him from passing on, turning him into an attendant spirit. He cannot physically interfere with this world, but he can meddle with his owner's mind.

Seek advice from his wealth of experience and remarkable skill!

※ However, nobody except the owner can perceive the attendant spirit.

※ This skill was copied from hunter Markus Kallenberg.

+

'Thinking about it, that really is incredible.'

Before my regression, the Flame Emperor had been revered as a legend for clearing up to the fortieth floor.

And this guy had reached the ninety-ninth? The ghost before me really had attained heights no one else had ever reached.

"When you're as good as I am, you can tell at a glance how much talent a hunter has. Whether they're a jackpot or a dud. That's why I asked you to show me how you hunt monsters, Kim Gongja."

"Aha."

I smiled wryly at his words.

"Were you checking whether I have a talent for swordsmanship, too?"

You know those stories. Someone goes through life unaware of their own talent, then one day falls off a cliff or meets a master and awakens their true power.

A fortuitous encounter.

"Tsk, tsk. You wasted your time."

Unfortunately, that sort of good fortune had never come my way.

"I don't have any talent for combat. I'm a complete dud. A dud. That's why I'm trying so desperately to copy other hunters' skills. If I had any talent, I'd have left F-rank behind ages ago. Would I have lived the way I did?"

The attendant spirit furrowed his brows.

"What the fuck are you talking about? You have talent."

"What?"

"And an incredible talent at that."

Huh.

That was far from the response I'd expected.

"Come on. Very funny. You're messing with me, right?"

"I don't joke about things like this."

The attendant spirit quietly shook his head.

"Of course, you don't have any talent for martial arts. Your movements are clumsy, and your build is mediocre. From the looks of it, learning aura through conventional methods would take you a long time, too. But completely apart from all that, you have one very rare talent."

His gaze was serious.

"You have no fear of death."

"..."

"None. Truly, astonishingly, none at all."

The attendant spirit stroked his chin.

"Your fear of death probably disappeared on its own as you died over four thousand times. That's what I suspected, too. You probably don't realize it, but you're completely reckless when you attack monsters. Most people hold back at least a little because they're afraid of dying or getting hurt, you know? But you don't."

"Uh, that counts as a talent?"

"Of course."

The answer was immediate.

"Talent isn't limited to what you're born with. People can awaken talents one by one as they live. And the hardest talent of all to develop is overcoming the fear of death. But you've already mastered it."

"..."

"That's extraordinary."

I was a little bewildered.

Nobody had ever said anything like that to me in my entire life. I'd never even thought of it that way myself. I'd just been so furious at being treated like a bug by the Flame Emperor... so furious that I'd plunged through four thousand deaths without looking back.

Dying.

That was my talent?

"Let me ask you one thing."

"... What is it?"

"You said old man Markus killed you. What did you think at the time?"

I recalled what I'd experienced during my last death. Only a few hours had passed, so the memories and emotions were still vivid.

The night sky and the moon.

The strike, so quiet that I hadn't heard a thing.

"... I thought it was beautiful."

That was when it happened.

"Bwahahahaha!"

The attendant spirit threw his head back and laughed. He burst into laughter. It was booming enough to deserve the name maniacal laughter, more than enough to fill the empty plains at dawn.

A long while passed before he stopped.

"Interesting."

The attendant spirit's eyes sparkled.

"You don't steal skills. You only copy them. In other words, old man Markus should still have [another me] attached to him as his attendant spirit. The old man and you. Which of you will achieve greater things as a hunter? Now I'm a little curious."

"..."

"I'll help you."

Sword Constellation. The attendant spirit, the ghost who said he'd once cleared the Tower up to the ninety-ninth floor and been called the Sword Emperor, looked straight at me.

"Until you're a match for old man Markus. No, until you're far stronger than he is!"

Then he held out his hand.

"Let's conquer the Tower!"

That was the moment I gained a partner.