EP.192 Say You Want to Live - 8
‘Ugh.’
Instantly, Ulpen’s consciousness faded. Blood splattered and his skull rattled. A sharp shock rang in his head, and as if that wasn’t enough, it overwhelmed his entire body.
Ulpen barely held on with his mental strength and steadied his stance. The distance he had struggled to close widened, but now was not the time to worry about that.
A sensation of his whole body going numb, as if facing a tiger. Ulpen had felt a similar feeling before. None other than in the Abyss.
Similar to facing an irresistible strong person, a strength where it felt like nothing would work, as if the very ranks of humans were divided.
A difference in power where even the will to resist becomes meaningless.
That was also felt from the young general before his eyes.
‘Should I... have run away!’
But it was already too late. Just like when facing the sorcerer, from the moment he entered the opponent’s sight, resisting was the only correct choice.
Having gathered his wits, Ulpen raised his arm to grab the small sword again.
At that moment, something streaked across his vision. Immediately after, his left arm was severed.
Blood splattered beneath the cloak, and the lower part of his left elbow flew off in a bizarre direction. Ulpen witnessed with his own eyes the sight of a part of his body abandoning him.
Bang.
A gunshot heard immediately after. And the pain that arrived much later.
“Ah, urgh. Now it hits right.”
At the end of that trajectory, a gunner aiming her muzzle was visible. Blue flames were billowing from the gun in her hand.
“Now, simple rules. I ask, you answer. Every time you don’t answer, one of your limbs flies off. How about it? Easy enough to understand even with your bug-like brain, right?”
It wasn’t gunpowder. Mere gunpowder couldn’t produce this much power.
The pinnacle of Bantan Qigong. Putting extremely compressed qi into a bullet and exploding it all at once to launch it.
Gunpowder is weak. Then, shoot it with qi.
The barrel cannot withstand the shock. Then, reinforce it with qi.
The recoil is heavy. Cancel it out with qi.
Technique, principle, tool.
Forged with qi that surpasses everything humans have created, the strongest weapon overcomes even Bantan Qigong.
It’s only called a gun, but it’s practically no different from a spear. A spear of infinite length fired by the flick of a finger.
However. It wasn’t entirely hopeless.
‘...This is a bullet she just made. Then, that gun is empty. If so.’
The last resort he could choose to survive. Even if he couldn’t kill her, he had to at least wound her to escape safely.
If so.
Ulpen reached out with his left arm. He caught the flying left arm with qi, charged while scattering its blood, and thrust out the gruesome cross-section showing bone and muscle.
“Ugh. I already feel sick as it is....”
Beneath her, who scowled as if about to vomit, Ulpen lowered his stance and lunged with all his might.
He thrust out the half-split small sword with his still intact right arm. At the same time, he secretly drew the dagger he had hidden to face strong opponents. Black smoke billowed from his entire body, and a sword with its blade painted pitch-black in the darkness surged up.
A shadow sword for killing a careless opponent at point-blank range. Another blade hidden beneath the shadow of the small sword, an art trained solely for murder...
...went, and shattered between the gunner’s elbow and knee.
Between her elbow and knee, his right arm was torn to pieces. Not because he lost strength, but because his hand purely could no longer grip, the small sword and dagger slipped through his shattered fingers.
Overwhelming pain. In contrast, the gunner was indifferent despite having broken a person’s arm.
“Two limbs. Now only two legs left.”
The muttering gunner struck Ulpen’s back with the pistol grip. She merely tapped him, but Ulpen felt a shock as if his entire body was being torn apart and crashed to the ground. He felt a pain as if the earth had surged up to swallow him.
A booted foot lightly flipped Ulpen’s body over. Into Ulpen’s vision, as he lay with both arms reduced to rags, came the towering building and the gunner’s face looking down at him as if observing a bug.
“Are you ready to answer now?”
An arrogant attitude that only an overwhelming strong person could display, placing everything in the world beneath their gaze.
Ulpen’s resistance ended in vain. Intuiting that everything was over, Ulpen vomited blood and asked.
“...Cough. Why, for a mere back-alley matter, would someone like you come...?”
No matter how he thought about it, she was too big a figure to be dispatched just because a few lower-class people died. A strong person of this caliber was clearly a national asset, someone who should be careful even when making a move.
When Ulpen asked, the gunner scratched her head with her gun.
“That’s strange. I said I’d be the one asking questions.”
“Promises must be kept,” the gunner muttered, pressing her boot firmly on Ulpen’s knee. Watching Ulpen’s mouth twist, the gunner spoke languidly.
“I’ll tell you just this once, so make sure you answer my next question well... Hameln, you know?”
Of course he knew. Ulpen nodded.
The military nation’s taboo. The incident where middle school students about to graduate were massacred.
Ulpen had used that as bait to draw in the military nation and clean up the back-alley area.
It was a mere back-alley. A marginalized place where those abandoned by the world gathered, a place no one cared about. He thought that if it were here, he could reign like a king...
However, at the gunner’s subsequent words, Ulpen realized he had been mistaken about something all along.
“Hameln. An academy built on a low hill. That’s my alma mater. How about it. Are you a bit more coherent now?”
“...Don’t tell me. You’re, the last graduate of Hameln....”
“Shut up. Next is my question. The one who told you about Hameln was Lankart. That son of a bitch, right?”
Of course. Ulpen nodded.
Because the one who told him about Hameln was exactly him.
The other one among the last graduates of Hameln, Colonel Lankart.
The young madman who, despite falling into Tantalos the latest, dominated the prisoners in every possible way.
Sometimes with power, sometimes with knowledge, sometimes with desire. The sorcerer who breathed new life into the darkly sinking Tantalos eventually led them and even broke out of prison.
Right before breaking out, he came to Ulpen as well. He stared at Ulpen for a long time as if pondering his usefulness, then spoke.
—Ulpen. I need capable subordinates. A lot of them. Someone cowardly and gloomy like you... Hmm. You could barely take on the role of a scout for our party!
—Whaaat? You’re going back to the military nation? Rejecting the chance to become greater, and going back to that tiny rat hole?
—Sigh. I didn’t know you were such a romance-less petty fellow. I’m offering you a fragment of the power to change this world, and you’ll just be a back-alley boss? Good grief. Even a horse running across the plains takes in new lands it hasn’t seen yesterday. Yet you’ll stuff yourself in a rat hole and keep looking at the same scenery. Ugh.
—Ah, don’t worry. I won’t kill you one by one just because I’m disappointed. Why bother? It’s fine with me if someone stirs up the back-alleys of the military nation anyway.
—Since you’re leaving, should I tell you a secret of the military nation? If you spread this around, the military nation will go crazy and jump in anger. It’ll change depending on how you use it.
The red-haired mage said while reminiscing about the past. It seemed even a monster like him had things called memories, as his eyes were looking far away....
—It’s called Hameln, you know? Something very interesting happened there....
“And the second.”
The gunner’s voice dragged Ulpen out of his thoughts.
“What’s the reason you spread that incident to the Black Cat? Was that also Lankart’s order, or your independent decision?”
This time he couldn’t understand what she meant. Ulpen expressed his confusion.
“Black... Cat? Do you mean the Family’s territory?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know... what you mean.”
“Hah? Are you going to play dumb?”
Crrrk. A weight like a boulder was placed on Ulpen’s knee. Along with the pain of his joint crushing, the gunner’s voice dug into his ear.
“The Black Cat is an expose tabloid that deals with gossip. Since it occasionally catches military corruption, naturally the Intelligence Department keeps an eye on it. But writing that name down openly... What the hell is that? It’s practically calling for me, isn’t it?”
“That... name...?”
As if telling him not to play dumb, the gunner scowled and pressed him.
“Top of the middle school, Hughy. I don’t know what got into Lankart to tell you even that. If he told you that guy’s name... You were played from the start. It’s no different from asking me to kill you.”
He agreed that he was played, but separately from that, what the gunner was saying was content he was hearing for the first time. Ulpen answered, expressing his confusion.
“It’s a name I’m hearing for the first time.”
“What?”
“What I know is that their deaths were suicides. That they cursed the military nation before dying. And that Lankart... took 2nd place. Beyond that... he said it was up to me to use it... so I roughly made it up.”
“That bastard was 3rd! Other than that, it’s somewhat true.”
Ulpen’s words were not lies, and they were that sincere.
Hearing a fact different from what she expected, the gunner fell into thought. She scratched her head vigorously with the gun, rummaged through her pockets as if looking for something, let out a deep sigh, and clicked her tongue.
“Come to think of it, that’s not Lankart’s style. Nor do you guys have a reason to do it. Then what? Then who the hell?”
The gunner fell into deep thought without even paying attention to Ulpen lying at her feet. As if Ulpen were a pebble by the roadside.
However, treated like a pebble, Ulpen felt helplessness instead of indignation.
‘...How powerless.’
This was exactly what Ulpen had realized in the Abyss.
In a world where ranks are fixed, any resistance is powerless.
Talent, mystery, or time. There is a wall that determines a human’s strength, and that wall can never be crossed. No matter how much one struggles, they cannot reach it, and those above an insurmountable realm do not even glance below.
Someone might be able to. To cross that wall and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the absolute.
However, those blessed enough to do so are set.
The rest just crash into the wall and disappear.
During the kingdom era, for him who had reigned in the shadows in his own right, the common sense of Tantalos was too hard to accept. Like a believer realizing the absence of a god, Ulpen despaired and fell into disappointment.
To Ulpen, the Abyss was a hell that he endlessly fell into, just as its name suggested.
Then one day, when a chance to escape the Abyss arose.
Ulpen gave up on higher places and sought to reign over the weak.
But in the end, he ended up in a situation where he caught the eye of someone stronger and was dying.
‘I made a mistake while facing the sorcerer. I absolutely, absolutely should not have faced them head-on.’
The sorcerer was frail, but used all sorts of tools to trick and deceive him. They clashed blades directly only twice. If he had realized his skills from the start and attacked with full power....
No, if he hadn’t given up his own tactics while fighting him. The result would have been similar, but at least a better outcome would have come out...
Something tickled in his chest. No matter how much he tried to recall what it was, Ulpen only guessed in vain, as if thrown into pitch darkness....
In such a vision of his. On the rooftop of a building narrowing as it reached for the sky.
I appeared.
I stood on the rooftop railing holding a cane and wearing a hat. I was invisible in the thoughtful gunner’s vision. From a spot visible only to the fallen, I slightly lifted my hat, extended my cane, and greeted.
Ulpen let out a small sigh.
“Ah.”
Though lacking in skill, one won and one lost.
I successfully escaped, but Ulpen was defeated and placed under a booted foot.
If he wanted to survive, he should have lived a bit more quietly. After causing such a commotion himself.
Well, I won’t boast about it. Since I had telepathy, it’s not fair to compare equally.
Still, one thing is certain.
The one lying on the ground is you, but you were stronger than me.