EP.133 The Slanted Ceiling and the Mountain of Smiling Corpses - 5
A thin voice escaped the Regressor as she barely managed to push herself upright.
"I... tried not to kill you either. I thought... maybe there was another way."
By all appearances, she was battered beyond recognition. The Regressor looked like she couldn't fight anymore.
But then—tuk, tuk. The blood she had shed began to flow backward. She had invoked the Blood Reversal Technique. At the same time, a wind swirled around her body, whisking away the dirt and dust. For a moment, her body seemed fully restored to pristine condition.
Of course, that was only the surface. The inside of her body, having taken a direct hit from the Earth Dragon, was accumulating significant damage. Standing on two feet would be difficult enough as it was.
But the Regressor possessed the ability to transmute pain and despair into fury.
"I... just wanted to do well. Because I was the only one who could. Because if I didn't change, nothing would change... I thought if my intentions were good, if I tried sincerely, everything would get better."
In the early days of her regressions, when she first saw the situation gradually improving compared to before,
the Regressor had believed.
She had believed that wherever trouble arose, she could appear, resolve every conflict, and craft a peaceful, beautiful daily life.
That if she repeated and repeated, things would progressively improve.
There was a time she had believed that.
However.
"Then why! Why, why, whyyyyyy!"
Futures she couldn't change. Hearts she couldn't move. Rigid beliefs, stubbornness, or sheer obstinacy.
Corrupt organizations, wicked individuals, and among them, the few good souls—they were the first to die when crisis struck.
Those she thought would help her were each hiding their own ulterior motives, and amidst it all, the Regressor merely played the fool alone.
Those who would truly help, despite their promises, would simply shake their heads in the next cycle.
"Why won't anyone help me?!"
The Regressor, brimming with resentment, lifted her head. In her eyes, a seven-colored rainbow flickered madly.
The Red Eye that sees temperature.
The Crimson Eye that overlooks.
The Gold Eye that sees the unseeable.
The Green Eye that pierces through.
The Blue Eye that sees depth.
The Indigo Eye that sees far.
The Violet Eye that sees power.
A Mystic Eye that would shake the world if even one of the seven appeared—the Seven-Colored Eye. All seven lights shimmered simultaneously.
They were not mixed, nor did they alternate. The seven colors existed independently yet flickered in unison.
A halo of light rose in the Regressor's pupils, twinkling like stars in the night sky. Was it tears streaming from the corners, or a halo of light?
All Eyes of the Seven-Colored Eye fully opened.
The Turning Celestial Eye (轉輪天眼).
A authority achievable only when all seven Mystic Eyes gathered together—it now witnessed something beyond reason.
"If you want to die so badly, then die once first! I'll worry about whether I can save you after that!"
The Seven Mystic Eyes that perceive the unseeable—the totality of them, the Turning Celestial Eye, gazes upon *possibility*.
An eye once called the Eye of Destiny, one that adjudicates one's own potential.
Due to its ambiguity, uncertainty, and the many who obsessed over fate only to bring ruin, the Mystic Eye was gradually shunned and eventually torn into fragments. But for the Regressor, it was different.
For the Regressor, the fruits of possibility already existed in number equal to her count of regressions.
She gazes upon herself.
She draws forth the potential of the being called Sehea.
It is not prophecy, nor foresight.
It is a power acquired in some past cycle. She reads and observes the potential she would fulfill in that cycle, and for a fleeting moment, reenacts that power.
The cost is her lifespan.
But for the Regressor, that is something she has in overwhelming abundance.
"Heavenly Sword Radiance, Dragon's Ascent!"
A storm surged behind the Regressor. Her aura, stretching out in all directions, spiraled violently. Kicking off the ground in a single bound, the Regressor soared upward and unleashed a gigantic slash wreathed in wind.
"...She jumped again. Does she lack the capacity to learn?"
Catch her with spatial arrays, bite her with the Earth Dragon. The Earth Immortal clenched his fist and twisted it.
*Kee-gi-geek.* The body of the Earth Dragon, forged from concrete, twisted with an ominous groan like a pillar burdened with too much weight.
"EYAAAAAAAH!"
"Earth Dragon."
Springs aren't limited to metal. So long as it doesn't snap, concrete too can act as a spring.
The Earth Dragon, moved by the Earth Immortal's power, was certainly qualified for the role.
The dragon of earth, springing forth, surged upward and appeared right before the Regressor's nose in an instant.
And in that same instant, it was split exactly in half.
At the point where one became two. The Regressor advanced, cleaving the Earth Dragon lengthwise. Cloaked in the storm, she swung the Heaven's Annihilation straight toward the defenseless Earth Immortal.
A momentum that, had it been unleashed on the ground, might have split clouds far in the distance.
*Chwa-ak.*
The Earth Immortal's body was deeply cut.
Blood gushed from the gaping wound. A fatal injury that raked from his shoulder to the opposite hip.
But even after landing the blow, the Regressor did not let her guard down. She immediately took a defensive stance and gritted her teeth.
And above her, the Earth Immortal's kick detonated. The Regressor's body shot away like a ball.
Immediately after.
*Tuk.* The Earth Immortal's right earring split apart. That fracture perfectly mirrored the wound on his body. As the shattered earring fell to the ground, the wound on the Earth Immortal sealed shut tightly, as if stitched.
"A Prepaid Funeral...! How annoying! Why do you just come back to life even when you're on the brink of death!"
The Regressor lashed out in irritation.
It was neither recovery nor restoration. He merely deferred the wound for a time. A technique for fighting further: by crafting a fetish doll from earth to temporarily transfer the shock, feigning an unscathed body—the Prepaid Funeral.
Despite its frivolous name, to be resurrected by that in the middle of a fierce battle was utterly infuriating.
Of course, the Earth Immortal was even more dumbfounded.
"...How peculiar. Prophecy cannot alter reality, and one cannot raise one's skill merely by seeing without practice. Yet, just now, that seemed as though your very level of skill itself had changed..."
The moment she was hit by the kick, she had jumped forward to blur the point of impact. Simultaneously, she extended her arm ahead of time, bracing against the leg to reduce the shock. That natural movement and the flow of her energy were distinctly different from before.
Her energy arts, her physical abilities—everything was overwhelmingly superior to before. The Earth Immortal felt this clearly.
"However. Just like wearing clothes a size too large, strands of scattered energy are leaking through the gaps. I know not what it is, but borrowed power will not last long."
"Borrowed?! This is originally my level of skill! If only I had three more years without this... if only that bastard hadn't interfered!"
Rapidly depleting energy weighed down her body heavily. Still, the Regressor burned her body with fury and shouted.
"Surrender! This is the last time I'll say it with words—!"
"This humble one wishes to ask you. You seem precarious; do you intend to keep fighting?"
"Ridiculous! If not for the Prepaid Funeral, I would have already died once!"
"Then I shall have to kill you two more times."
*Jingle.* The clay figure on the Earth Immortal's left ear swayed. A spare life.
And the remaining one life was her own.
They exchanged short glances, confirming each other's resolve.
The Regressor raised her sword again, and the Earth Immortal clad himself in concrete. Since it had come to this, it was a battle of time. Whether the Regressor could defeat the Earth Immortal before her time limit ran out—that would decide victory or defeat.
As the Regressor glared up at the Earth Immortal with sparkling eyes, she suddenly spotted a human figure moving atop the mountain of corpses far beyond him.
She was so dumbfounded she nearly collapsed.
The Regressor's eyes flew wide open.
*'That... what is he doing over there?!'*
When the Immortal struck out with his fist and pierced the belly of one of the corpses, instead of collapsing, the corpse stared dazedly down at the Immortal's right arm, which had burrowed into its body.
A listless voice escaped the lips of the gut-pierced corpse.
*...Soil.*
Soil?
Other corpses reacted to that single utterance. The murmur rode from corpse to corpse, and soon, every corpse began to murmur the single word "soil" in unison.
Right after, their heads creaked as they turned. Their eyes turned as well. And then they began to madly rush toward the Immortal.
"U-uh! Kalis, get clear!"
Before being swallowed by the wave of corpses, the Immortal hoisted Kalis up and hurled her far away. Abruptly thrown, Kalis tucked into a breakfall and tumbled head over heels.
Moments later, the Immortal was swept up by the tide of corpses.
"Rash!"
Kalis's scream was buried beneath the corpses' chanting.
*Bury. We must bury.*
*We must honor the souls.*
A frenzied chanting. A cry in which only a mission remained. The corpses in their baggy clothes lunged like beasts thirsting for prey.
Kalis bit down hard on her teeth. Their numbers had already surpassed what she could handle. Cursing her own helplessness, Kalis knelt before Tyr.
"Progenitor! Please! Save Rash!"
"...Understood. Wait a moment."
As it happened, Tyr was in the midst of floating a cloud of blood droplets into the air. Amidst the mass of corpses, the Immortal's booming voice rang out.
"Wait! Something is strange!"
The corpses swarmed like ants. By all accounts, he should have been torn to shreds—yet the Immortal's voice was perfectly fine.
"These beings are less hostile than expected! Perhaps they aren't trying to attack us...!"
And then the Immortal's body surged up from among the corpses. As if bearing him on a palanquin, the corpses hoisted the Immortal atop their heads and began walking toward the mountain of corpses.
From his perch atop the corpses, the Immortal shouted.
"Haha! I feel just like a king!"
And then—*boom.* The blood droplets Tyr flicked swept across the area beneath the Immortal in one stroke. An attack closer to an area than a line. The corpses were shattered to pieces, and the Immortal, losing his support, dropped back down with a thud.
As the Immortal rubbed his backside, Tyr murmured.
"That doesn't mean there's a reason to leave them be. In any case, vengeful spirits are merely echoes of the death-throes those about to die cried out at their end. Eliminating them early is rather a mercy. Wouldn't you agree, Hugh...?"
As he said this and turned his head—
Where I had been, a corpse wearing my outer robe stood in my stead.
Tyr cocked his head. Then, belatedly grasping the situation, he paled in shock. Soon after, he was utterly appalled.
"Hugh?!"
The startled Tyr began frantically looking around, searching for me after my sudden disappearance.
And at that very moment, I was riding atop a vengeful spirit-possessed corpse, ascending the mountain of the dead.