EP.42 How to Hide a Corpse
Night, with the corridor lamps extinguished. Only a faint nightlight illuminated the world within the darkness that refused a single sliver of light. The prison corridor, admitting no light whatsoever, displayed nothing but a pitch-black silhouette, as if someone had laid black paper over the world and shaded it in with pencil. An absolute darkness where, without careful scrutiny, one wouldn't even notice a wall right before their eyes.
Within that darkness, a man was moving, his footsteps silenced.
He was wrapped around something—a large bundle—from the gaps of which bizarrely fractured arms and legs protruded. Angles absolutely impossible under normal human anatomy; angles only possible if arms and legs were attached somewhere other than a vertebrate's skeletal structure.
Or, perhaps, the arms and legs were entirely detached.
The sight of him transporting a dismembered body was, to any observer, the movement of someone attempting to conceal a corpse. He should have been seized and interrogated for his crimes at once, yet the veil of darkness concealed not only his form but his sin as well. That which cannot be seen is not a crime. Thanks to the cover of night, without interference from anyone…
"Woof? What's that?"
"Shh. Aji, go on. It's a surprise present."
"Woof? Present? Mine?"
"As if."
Without interference from any 'person,' he hid the dismembered body in a secret location.
"Woof!"
"Don't try to uncover it! Ahem! It's not food! Bad!"
He hid it. Anyway, he did.
Another peaceful day. I stood before the chalkboard with the trainees assembled. I was about to pick up a piece of chalk, but seeing the chalk box empty, I pointed at the regressor.
"We're out of chalk. Trainee Shei, could you get some from the cabinet in the back?"
"You're making me do that?"
"It's close. Please."
"Tch. Fine, if you insist."
The regressor sullenly approached the cabinet. I slowly counted her steps.
Now. One. Two. Three. Ta-da.
Just as I had designed, the regressor flung the cabinet door open.
In that moment, a body with bizarrely fractured limbs and twitching crimson muscles tumbled out abruptly. A face with its tongue lolling out as if dead locked eyes with the regressor, then slowly began to collapse toward her. Along with its dismembered limbs.
A bizarre corpse appearing without any warning or context. It was a sight that would make a person of ordinary fortitude fall over in shock.
But the regressor faced it impassively.
"Cheonbangyeong."
As if she wouldn't be surprised by something like this. Maintaining a blank expression, she pushed the falling corpse away with her hand…
'Kyaaah--!'
Only her expression was blank.
In contrast to her calm exterior, the regressor was so startled she screamed mentally. When the right arm detached from the corpse twitched, she shuddered and frantically shoved it back inside.
'That scared me…! What is this?! Why is something like this inside the cabinet?!'
In her mind, she was throwing a complete fit from the shock. Yet none of this emotion leaked outside the regressor's body.
The regressor's qi art, Cheonbangyeong—a technique that engraved specific movements into the body to respond reflexively in any situation—activated even when she was startled out of her wits by an unexpected situation. Though startled to the point her heart was pounding, her body, tempered through countless training, maintained an unmoving mind—no, an unmoving body (不動身).
The regressor glanced back at me and spoke in an even tone.
"There's a corpse inside. Hey. Do you know anything about this?"
'…S-Since when was a corpse in here? Could it have been here since we first arrived? Th-That's a bit creepy.'
What. She composes herself quickly. Tch. I thought she'd be a bit more surprised. This was my masterful surprise box, and it feels like the preparation was for nothing.
Swallowing my regret, I answered with feigned ignorance and perfect composure.
"Huh. Since when has that been in there?"
Then Aji perked up his ears and stood.
"Woof! I know! Yesterday…"
"Kkal (喝)! When a human is speaking, what business does a beast have interrupting?!"
Having gagged the witness dog, I made a casual gesture.
"It seems someone hid this corpse inside the cabinet. We need to investigate. Trainee Shei, could you bring it out for a moment?"
"This thing?"
"It's close. Please. You're not scared of corpses, are you?"
"Well, that's true."
The regressor casually hoisted the corpse. Judging by her exterior alone, she looked like someone who hadn't been surprised at all. And her inner feelings, well, were mostly undisturbed too.
They say the mind follows the body. If she didn't have that Cheonbangyeong thing, she would have shown quite an unsightly appearance. It's deeply regrettable.
"Here."
The regressor laid out the dismembered body of the undying one. I crouched down and matched the limbs in front of the regressor's eyes. For dramatic effect, I pushed the tongue I had slightly stuck out last night back in, and restored the right arm—whose every finger I had tied up in case it resisted—to its original position.
As the reassembly was completed and it gradually took on a human form, the regressor's gaze deepened.
'It wasn't a corpse. A muscular giant, dark skin… It's definitely that undying one.'
Oh. Finally.
My reason for hiding the undying one in the cabinet wasn't solely to startle the regressor. That was always a secondary objective.
According to the regressor's memories, in all past iterations, this undying one seems to survive until the end… Well, I suppose that's obvious for an undying one.
The previous iteration. While searching for information, the regressor met the undying one, heard a rough account of what happened in Tartarus, and then infiltrated this place directly to obtain more accurate information.
That was as far as I could read. Because the regressor's recollection ended, there was no way to know what information she heard from the undying one or what happened in the previous iteration. It would have been nice if I could read up to the memories of the previous iteration, but for some reason, I can only read past iterations through the regressor's recollections.
Therefore, even just to find out why I died, I needed to bring the undying one before the regressor's eyes. Only then would even the smallest clue crawl out of the regressor's head.
The regressor asked in a more serious voice.
"Has this undying one been here the whole time?"
"Who knows?"
"That can't be. With wounds like these, there would have been bleeding. If so, there's no way Tirkanjaka wouldn't have noticed."
The vampire herself answered the regressor's question.
"No. If that is who I think it is, even I would not have noticed."
The vampire, who as always was sitting using a coffin as a chair, looked indifferently at the body with its limbs fallen off.
"They are natives from somewhere on the plains."
"Natives?"
"Because we are both undying, to distinguish between us, we call them the Earthen. They call us the Blood Fiends. Our relationship is rather distant. They consider us cursed, and we in turn cannot partake of their blood."
The vampire raised her hand. Then the coffin lid cracked open slightly, and dark-red blood oozed out from within, crawling toward the undying one. It looked as if it would devour him at any moment.
However. The moment the blood touched the undying one's body, it rapidly lost its strength. The crimson blood turned pitch-black, then crumbled like sand and fell to the ground.
"Their flesh resembles the Earth Mother. They obtained undying nature after offering their race as human sacrifice. Their flesh is sand, their blood is mud. It is an extremely impure and filthy body that only they can possess. Therefore, even with blood outside their body, it is not affected by my Blood Manipulation Art."
The vampire gently wrinkled her face and flicked her hand. The remaining blood, minus the sand-like crumbled portion, returned to the vampire's side. The vampire shook it off as if she had touched filth.
The regressor nodded.
"…I see. Then, no one knows when this undying one has been here."
Hearing the regressor's muttering, Aji straightened his body and spoke.
"Woof, I know! Yesterday…!"
"Kkal (喝)! Why does a double-digit IQ speak in the triple-digit club! Even a village dog listens politely for three years, yet a mere prison guard dog dares to open its mouth?! You're ten years too early!"
"…Grr."
Aji's affinity seems to have dropped a little. I'll have to brush his fur for about an hour later to barely recover it.
Still, shutting his mouth is the priority right now. The regressor quickly lost interest in me and Aji.
'What nonsense is he pulling on Aji again… Well, whatever. That man's eccentricities aren't a one or two-day thing.'
This is why daily conduct is important. Even when you do crazy things, people just let it pass without much suspicion. My efforts in perpetrating eccentricities all this time have indeed borne fruit.
'More importantly, the undying one comes first. He seems to be in critical condition; can he even open his eyes? If we were on the surface I wouldn't know, but in the Abyss with severed meridians, it'll be difficult for him to recover on his own.'
The regressor's questioning gaze turned to the undying one. Though an undying one who regenerates easily even from fatal wounds, there was no means to restore them in the Abyss.
'Unless it's the grace of the Earth Mother… I don't know, maybe if he consumed a full harvest of crops. But who knows how long that would take. Use a potion? If I do that and things turn out differently from the past, my information would become meaningless instead.'
For some reason, I heard that an ordinary human absolutely couldn't swallow bean porridge with the pot and all. So that was to regenerate wounds.
I was originally just going to show it and be done with it. Hmm. In this situation, should I just try waking him up once?
Alright, I've decided. I waved my hand toward the regressor.
"Trainee Shei, who likes men, please stop looking down at a man's body with lustful eyes and return to your seat?"
The regressor, who had been lost in deep thought, suddenly stumbled. Barely catching her balance before she fell over, the regressor shouted at me.
"W-What are you suddenly saying!"
"Even though this person is unconscious, continuously neglecting a hot gaze from a man who likes men is, well, a bit inappropriate."
"What hot gaze?! I'm normal!"
"Huh? What? You like women? Then what about the time you personally bathed Aji? Was it not black grime you scrubbed off Aji, but black worldly desires?"
"No! That's impossible!"
"Well, I suppose not. Because you like men."
"Th-!"
While the regressor, caught in self-contradiction, could only flush red without being able to rebut.
The vampire tapped the desk with her parasol.
"Enough."
Then she opened her parasol slightly to cover her face. A somewhat bashful voice flowed from behind the parasol.
"I will vouch. As I watched over as you ordered last time, Shei was merely flustered while bathing the King of Dogs, with no particular signs of awareness. So, the claim that you like men must be true as well… Oh my."
"Wait, Tirkanjaka!"
"It is fine, Shei."
Perhaps finding it too difficult to even meet her eyes, the vampire revealed only her mouth and defended the regressor with an indescribably warm smile.
"I have given it much thought, and is your inclination not also a part of you? Though you have forsaken the heavenly law of the harmony of yin and yang, I am likewise a monster who defies heaven. As existences equally unaccepted by the Holy Court of Stellar Brilliance, I cannot fault you."
"I don't have that kind of…!"
"I am fine. I understand."
The vampire's smile, having decided to fully accept the other, was so tender that even the sharp-tongued regressor couldn't argue back.
A situation beyond any escape. The regressor flushed bright red and clamped her mouth shut.
'I'd rather just reveal I'm a woman right now…! No! I can't do that. If I say I'm a woman at this timing, it feels like I lost!'
Her pride is formed in a strange direction too. She considers revealing a certain truth while being cornered into flight as a defeat.
From my position, reading all her thoughts, it's quite amusing.
Well, the other party doesn't know I'm using telepathy. I can just keep reading her thoughts and teasing her like this.
'Besides, with the Mask of Agartha I got from the treasure hall, I've set it so my first impression is always perceived as male. To break this suggestion, there's no choice but to take off my clothes… But I'd rather die than do that!'
So that's why she wasn't found out despite such a sloppy male disguise—it was because of another inexplicable treasure. The world really does have all sorts of wondrous things.
Wait. What? She'd rather die? Not "even if I die" but "rather die"? Die than do what, exactly?
I hastily stepped forward and straightened out the situation.
"Alright, alright. That conversation ends here! Now let's try reviving this undying one who suffered an unfortunate accident!"
…Alright. Let's stop teasing. Mercifully providing an escape route for the regressor to flee to, I pointed at the undying one lying there with all his limbs torn off.