EP.131 The Slanted Ceiling and the Mountain of Laughing Corpses – 3
“…I thought that might be the case. So you were connected to the Seonghwangcheong.”
A brief hostility flickered in Tír's eyes as she looked at the Regressor. It was a reflexive enmity.
A hatred and hostility, truly ingrained in blood and etched in bone, welled up like an instinct.
If Tír's heart were still stopped, she might have joined forces with Jiseon to attack the Regressor. But.
"...Contrary to that, you were pure. What is it?"
The time spent together was long. She had shown many aspects.
In all that time, she had never felt hostility or contempt from the Regressor. Only an awkward friendliness that made her chuckle in vain.
Three months. To Tír, it was a brief moment, but to her, whose heart had started beating anew, it had been a deeply impressive experience.
So Tír decided not to get involved in that fight.
See, Regressor. I know what you were worried about, but I'm not going to interfere.
Just then, the Immortal, having landed on the sea of blood with Calis, felt the gusting wind and muttered.
"Hmm! I thought you were connected to the Heavenly God because you use some power of the sky like wind and clouds!"
"The authority of the Seonghwangcheong is not that of the Heavenly God. The Heavenly God never bestowed any power upon humans."
Tír's words, having clashed with the Seonghwangcheong more than anyone in her life, were filled with such certainty. Tír, with blood-red eyes, followed an invisible sword as she spoke.
"Though they call themselves followers of the Heavenly God, they revere the first Holy Woman above the god. Those called Holy Women thereafter were all titled as prophetesses or seers."
"Oh? Come to think of it, that's right! Then isn't that even more impressive? It means they built such a prosperous force without divine power!"
"The authority of the Time-World Aspect (時界相) that sees through time and the world is even more absurd. Hmph, cowardly wretches..."
Even after her heart started beating, the resentment remained; Tír muttered with clear contempt.
"Anyway, Shei cannot be a seer. After the first Holy Woman was nailed to the cross, only women could become Holy Women. Unless she was hiding her gender... unless...?"
It was when Tír tilted her head, struck by a sudden thought.
"Grrrrr!"
Aji, hanging like a bat from a support, barked fiercely. To Aji, who felt an instinctive revulsion to human corpses, the entire land must have looked like a minefield.
Since they're already corpses, stepping on or breaking them wouldn't be much of a problem, but since Aji dislikes them, there's no need to force her down.
"Fine. You stay there. If you don't like it, don't come down..."
"Grrrrrrr!"
However, Aji wasn't barking simply because she disliked the corpses.
Something stirred among the corpses. One of the searchlights that detected movement swiftly moved and shone on it.
Thanks to that, I could clearly see a corpse in baggy clothes getting up on its knees.
Of course, I wasn't very grateful.
Death is the cessation of life, an involuntary act where the boundary with the world blurs.
Therefore, a corpse that has died and returned to the world should not be able to move on its own. It should be eaten away starting from the skin, becoming one with the world.
So, in other words, that corpse staggering to its feet is engaging in an act absolutely not recommended for a corpse.
"Damn it, really."
The number one thing you shouldn't do in a grave: the corpse had pulled a 'get up again', and I grimaced.
"A vengeful spirit? Well, if there are 300,000, it's not strange for there to be a few vengeful spirits."
Tír reacted indifferently.
This is the reason the Earth Mother Faith and buriers are necessary, and why they once flourished.
Sometimes, residual thoughts dwell in a corpse filled with resentment, and they would move or transform the dead body. You might call it a primitive body-mediated magic unleashed just before death.
Of course, since residual thoughts can't be stronger than a living human, most were exterminated as such. Still, because having to clean up moving corpses again was extremely unpleasant and inconvenient, people would pay buriers to bury them.
Because underground, where even living people can't escape, residual thoughts would only stir briefly and then vanish.
"It's trivial. Wait a moment."
Of course, to Tírkanjaka, the world's worst vengeful spirit progenitor who was buried alive and appeared in the world with a body closest to a corpse, it was nothing.
"I don't even need to use my own power."
Tír waved her hand.
A hazy form flashed in the darkness. In that instant, with a thud, a pitch-black sword tore through the belly of the vengeful spirit-possessed corpse and appeared.
It was the Black Knight.
After the Black Knight drew the sword and kicked the back of the knee, the corpse slumped to its knees. The Black Knight then blew off the corpse's head. Swish—the severed head disappeared from the range of the searchlight's beam.
I clapped at the Black Knight's performance.
"Wow! Black Knight! That's your first action of the season! You might be able to shed the stigma of wage thief from the combat power meter!"
"...Of course, the Black Knight wouldn't lose to a mere vengeful spirit."
Come to think of it, the Black Knight is also a kind of vengeful spirit. The thoughts of knights killed by Tír. So a knight would be stronger than a common soldier...
Just as I thought that. Clank! Something grabbed the Black Knight's ankle. The Black Knight looked down with its jet-black helmet, but then it tripped over the hand that snagged its foot.
What appeared above were countless hands. Like a swarm of ants, fingers crawled over the Black Knight's body, tearing, pinching, and scratching the darkness. Restrained all over and struggling, the Black Knight was torn into shreds and turned to dust.
Under the searchlight's glow, there were only hands.
In that moment when everyone was speechless. I retracted my earlier words with a cold face.
"Cancel that. Being defeated after handling only one target is a pretty shabby record for a knight. From now on, how about Black Henchman instead of Black Knight? No, 'Black' sounds too strong, so let's go with Mud Henchman."
"Is this the time for wordplay? Stay close to me. It's not dangerous, but something is unusual."
As if to reinforce Tír's words, a warning siren rang out across Tantalos.
Wee-yong—.
The artificially synthesized sharp noise pierced the ears.
The searchlights gave up further tracking. There were too many human shapes, and more than a few moving targets.
Instead, the searchlights fiercely blared and grew in size. The light that had been sharp like arrows spread, and at the same time, light surged from the rim of Tantalos.
I had thought the only proper lighting was the one daylight lamp, but that seems to have been my misconception. Tiny lights hidden along the rim of Tantalos all rose up at once. Individually, they were much dimmer than the daylight lamp, but.
When the lights that had risen from the rim all turned on, a dazzling light arrived throughout the Mujeogeng.
A low ceiling, shadowless light emitted from light sources surrounding all sides.
Thanks to that, the mountain of corpses was now clearly visible.
A mountain made of clothes, flesh, arms, legs, and occasional heads. The sight of humans with rounded curves piled up and up to form a round ridge now evoked only a disgust beyond horror, like looking at a low-quality artwork.
But before that disgust could settle, an even more terrible sight appeared before my eyes.
At the foot of the mountain of corpses, a sea of filtered blood.
Along the shoreline of that blood sea, corpses in baggy clothes all began to rise at once.
A horde of vengeful spirits on a scale that could be called an army. In the face of it, Tír showed a tense expression.
"...It's bright. Difficult to handle shadows. Instead."
The splashing blood rose at her call.
Although her Blood Manipulation couldn't be expressed well outside her body since her heart started beating, she could handle blood this close.
Tír lifted a bright red blood bead into the air and said.
"Stay close to me, Hugh."
And when she flicked her finger, a wave of blood rose in a fan shape and swept the corpses away at once. The vengeful spirit-possessed corpses left behind no trace of even a corpse, no, not even a trace of having existed.
Even so, Tír could not relax.
Because she was not afraid of the vengeful spirit-possessed corpses, but afraid that I might get hurt.
"I will definitely protect you."
How reassuring. I raised my thumb and shouted.
"The Black Rose is better than the Black Knight, no, better than the Mud Henchman!"
"You really have no sense of tension, do you!"
Over there, Calis and the Immortal were fighting the vengeful spirit-possessed corpses. The Immortal swung his fists in succession, and each time, corpses shattered or flew into the air.
However, the compatibility was bad. Although the Immortal doesn't tire, he only has two hands. Even if he takes down three corpses with one punch, dozens more swarm in the gap, so he had no choice but to be pushed back.
And if there's someone to protect, he can only become more passive. The Immortal shouted.
"Calis! Stay close to me! Do not stray away!"
"No! I will join the fight too!"
"What fight with injuries! I do not tire, so don't worry! Those things aren't even worth one punch!"
Then Calis yelled out.
"Idiot! That was all an act! Get a clue already!"
"Huh?"
The moment the Immortal hesitated was the distance the corpses closed in. Calis bit her lip and inserted the military equipment packet into the bio-terminal.
"Call to Arms!"
Clank, clank.
A steel gauntlet enfolding the left arm with an Alchemical Light. Having equipped her military gear, Calis punched at the approaching corpse. Crunch! The corpse's skull shattered and teeth flew out. Calis snatched the teeth with her right hand and quickly inserted them into a groove on the back of the gauntlet.
And then she aimed and shouted.
"Set, Li, Li, Li, Pascal, Gun!!"
A groove that should have originally spouted steam. But instead, compressed air violently propelled the tooth.
Thwung.
A sort of air gun. The tooth shot like an arrow and hit the approaching corpse's head. With a smack, the corpse's neck bent back slightly.
But that was all. The corpse walked again as if nothing had happened.
"Tsk! The specifications don't match! It's also too light...!"
"It's a tooth, so wouldn't that be the case?"
"Maybe because it's long dead, the teeth are brittle and have no alchemical resistance! Then!"
'Simple Alchemy!'
When Calis clenched her right fist and then opened it, a tooth transformed by alchemy appeared. The shapes and sizes varied, but the thickness was uniform.
Calis inserted a tooth that had been ground to fit the size into the groove and fired. Foosh— A much smaller wind sound than before.
"Gun!"
The tooth that flew like that pierced through the right ankle of the approaching corpse. The approaching corpse lost its balance and toppled over.
"I will assist!"
"Oh, um. Don't overdo it?"
Until now, she hadn't shined because she was stuck among monsters, but a prepared officer is a precisely designed war-execution machine. If she can't do at least this much, the military nation would be in trouble.
Of course.
No matter how much.
"Heavenly Sword Ki, Thunder Bird!"
"O Earth Mother God!"
They can't compare to that.
Flash.
A lightning bolt strikes. The bright yellow electric shock that started from the Cheon-aeng falls toward Jiseon.
However, Jiseon avoided the lightning by lowering her body and leaping. Her speed was slow compared to lightning, but the lightning couldn't track Jiseon, who had become one with the earth.
Boom. When Jiseon stomped her foot, a vibration traveled through the corpses. They spread like ripples and then converged under the Regressor's feet, and soon at that point, a corpse exploded and shot up.
A corpse flew at the Regressor at a speed similar to a cannonball. Whether by coincidence or intention, the spinning arm precisely aimed for the Regressor's side. The Regressor lightly lifted off, stepped lightly on the corpse, and leaped again.
'Tch. Already adapted to the land of corpses. I thought I would have the advantage with no ground underfoot...!'
"You thought you would be advantaged because this land is not made of soil and rock, did you?"
Jiseon saw through the Regressor's thoughts.
"The earth is originally the body of the Earth Mother God. No matter what trivial things lie below, they all originate from the earth. I do not distinguish the ground!"
"How great you are, really...!"
The grumbling Regressor landed on the inverted ceiling. The qi technique that had reached a high level allowed her light body to walk on the slanted ceiling as if it were ground.
Jiseon could probably do something similar, but she wouldn't be as agile as the Regressor. Above all, Earth Arts can only be used by stepping on the earth...
It didn't take long to realize that was a misconception.
“There is no sky in this land either. Even if a great earth has become the ceiling, it shall not be your ally!”
Firmly speaking, Jiseon thrust her fingers into the void. Tendons stood out at her fingertips.
Judging by appearances alone, one might have thought she was performing a mime. She seemed to be exerting strength upon the empty air.
But it was not mime. Mime pretends something exists when it truly does not.
“Fury!”
Because Jiseon’s power was, in truth, being brought to bear.
As though gripping something, her hand swung. At that very moment, the concrete landmass upon the ceiling was sliced in a lattice, and square blocks descended upon the Regressor. Though her feet did not touch it, the earth obeyed her will.
*Even without Jizan, she’s like this!*
Should one call this an inverted upsurge, or a falling?
Regardless, the squarely hewn, solid concrete grazed past the Regressor. She had frantically leaped to evade a direct hit, yet the shock still coursed through her body.
“Tch…!”
Wherever she set her feet, it was perilous. Drawing rapid breaths, the Regressor alighted at a distance.
In contrast, Jiseon strode forward with the same demeanor as when she had first stepped foot here.
“It is dispiriting, Great Warrior. Do you lack ability, or do you lack hostility? Why do you bar the path of this humble one when you lack either? Is it a sense of duty? Or is this the sole path toward the future you desire?”
Jiseon regarded the Regressor with deeply sunken eyes.
“If you will not fight, I wish you would step aside. This humble one does not wish to do battle with one who bears no hostility.”
The Regressor answered.
“…Those you shall come to face will also bear no hostility.”
“Such people will learn to avoid me. This humble one is only here to call sins to account. I must lay bare the hidden misdeeds, item by item, and demand atonement.”
“Even so, I will not step aside. They too will have a sense of duty to protect the sanctuary. Just as you do.”
A clash of duties. Would not another name for that be pure tragedy, devoid of both good and evil?
With what little eloquence she possessed, the Regressor somehow conveyed that meaning.
Jiseon briefly furrowed her brow, but her deliberation was short. The conclusion had already been reached within her.
“…Then I shall only sweep them aside and go.”
“So I am trying to stop you. You… yes. Because you will not fall. Even if it means toppling everyone else.”
That was the Regressor’s duty to safeguard the future. The Regressor raised her sword once more. As though steadying her heart, not even the tip of the blade wavered now.
Jiseon, who had been watching her resolute foe with arid eyes, composed her own feelings and declared calmly:
“This humble one shall ascend up there and lay hold of the Great Master’s relic. It is a thing as natural as a boulder rolling down a slope, so if you mean to stand before me, you must arm yourself with resolve equal to it.”
A statement clearly aimed at the Regressor. It was a kind yet firm proclamation: if you are going to show an ambiguous attitude, then make your choice with certainty.
“Without breaking me, you will not be able to stop me.”
And so, she who does not fall climbed a mountain of corpses.
Uprightly, toward the summit.