“Disciple-chan, you still don’t know? Master’s got a lot to teach you.”
“Huuung……”
“Hand.”
Geuru took the large hand held out before her.
‘Hm?’
Beyond the tattoos carved into his knuckles, a shape like a red chain appeared and then vanished.
‘I’m sure I saw it.’
But Kazuki started walking, and the question quickly slipped away.
“Disciple-chan, let’s have a race. If you win, I’ll give you this. It’s something Master treasures.”
From among the many things dangling on his hand, Kazuki shook a rough-looking plain ring.
What was that?
When Geuru stared with her mouth hanging open, Kazuki explained.
“It’s the first S-rank item Master ever made. A double proficiency buff. Continuous type.”
“……!”
If it was continuous, that meant an incredible item whose buff never ended!
“Now then, Master’s going first!”
“Ah!”
No! She couldn’t lose!
“Essssss—!”
Geuru shouted loudly, flung both arms wide, and began running toddle-toddle.
Behind the child darting away like a squirrel, Kazuki let out the breath he had been holding.
“Phew……!”
His breathing came in short gasps. He desperately swallowed down the pain.
It was pain like his entire body was being bound by heated chains.
Amakusa Kazuki, bearing his father’s karma, was dying.
*
The debuff “paternal karma.”
Those afflicted by this curse have chains stained with blood wrap around their bodies in proportion to the karma of their paternal line.
Those chains tighten around the heart as well, ultimately leading to death.
Over the dense tattoos covering him, the image of red chains surfaced.
The karma that grew like ivy could no longer be hidden even by the tattoos that had increased one by one.
He had been afflicted by the debuff not long after creating the first generation of the Amakusa Series.
[“It is called paternal karma. A kind of curse.”]
It had been one day, when he was at a loss from pain whose cause he did not know.
When Prime Minister Takahashi told him it was a curse, he laughed a little hollowly.
Somehow, he had thought something like this might come for him.
His father had brutally killed his family.
And somewhere, he was surely killing someone else even now.
Killing even a complete stranger without hesitation, so long as a request came in—that was his father’s karma.
Kazuki accepted it, thinking it would not be strange if someone had placed such a curse.
Even before he had been afflicted by the debuff, Kazuki had always found his father’s karma burdensome.
That was why he had tried to live kindly.
At one point, he joined Doctors Without Borders and remodeled a supply truck into an amphibious off-road vehicle with the firepower of a tank.
Another day, he up and left to a refugee camp and built a well that drew water from five hundred kilometers away.
The week after that, he built an orphanage and a school in a region gripped by civil war, structures that would not collapse even if struck by missiles.
[“A complete cure is impossible, but they say it can be delayed. All you need to do is meet the people I send once in a while.”]
Even after living so freely, like duckweed drifting on the water, he was once again leashed.
In truth, it was no exaggeration to say he had only been able to preserve his life because he had awakened as an S-rank production-type.
As the prime minister of Japan, Takahashi could not afford to lose an S-rank production-type, so he had found a way by any means necessary.
Once every three or four months, Kazuki met the onmyoji sent by Prime Minister Takahashi, extending his life three months at a time. And afterward, without fail, Prime Minister Takahashi would ask.
[“When will the next Amakusa Series be possible?”]
Thus Amakusa Kazuki, who detested violence more than anyone, had no choice but to become a swordsmith for Japan—no, for Prime Minister Takahashi.
Perhaps because of his childhood spent in a stifling orphanage, Kazuki had always loved travel and freedom.
He had even gone all the way to Kenya in search of a curse-breaker who could completely remove the debuff, but there had been no progress.
Living each day just because he was alive, then every so often being bound to Takahashi and forced to make weapons, suffering under his father’s karma—all of it disgusted him and made him sick.
That was why he had come to Korea.
Now, he had only a little over a week left.
He had two choices.
Kill his father and find a free life.
Or seek freedom and die.
*
Kazuki opened the paper-latticed door, through whose window he could clearly see that the lights had gone out, and stepped inside.
The child was curled up tightly like a shrimp, sound asleep.
Sitting by her pillow, Kazuki lifted the child’s hand and slipped the ring onto her middle finger. The loose ring shrank to fit her small, slender finger.
He stroked the sprout on the crown of her head and smiled.
It was a place thick with mana, optimal for a monster to grow, but—
‘To think they planted a sprout-type monster on the top of her head.’
A small, breathy laugh escaped him.
Every single thing the child did was absurd and adorable.
After Kazuki kissed Geuru on the forehead and left the room, a monk was standing before the door.
He spoke in a whisper.
“Let us go that way and talk.”
*
Moonlight had settled softly before the wide wooden veranda.
Monk Hyeongak, who had held Kazuki’s wrist for a long while as though taking his pulse, only opened his mouth after a long time had passed.
“You came such a long way, so I am ashamed to say this, but this curse is beyond my ability to undo.”
Monk Hyeongak, an A-rank support-type Awakened, continued in a grave voice after confirming Kazuki’s debuff.
“……I can delay the curse.”
Kazuki shook his head.
“I’ve lived that way for a long time. I don’t want to anymore.”
“I do not know if this will be of comfort, but according to Buddhist doctrine, the end is not the end. Life leads on to another life.”
The monk drew a circle with his hand.
Kazuki, who knew a little about the concept of reincarnation, bared his sharp canines and laughed heartily.
“Thanks for the comfort, Monk-san.”
Kazuki looked at the moon for a moment, then glanced toward the room where Geuru was sleeping.
Noticing this, Monk Hyeongak spoke quietly.
“Even knowing that it is not the end, lingering attachment is hard to cast off. No matter how long one practices, it remains so. Emptying oneself is always difficult, yet I do not know why filling oneself is so quick.”
“Mm.”
Kazuki let his eyebrows droop into a pitiable arch and spoke hollowly.
“That’s true. I came to empty myself, but ended up filling myself instead.”
“When Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara practiced the profound Prajnaparamita, he clearly saw that the five aggregates are all empty and crossed beyond all suffering and distress.”
“I don’t know what that means from there on, Monk-san. Korean’s hard, no matter how much I learn.”
“The suffering of the saha world will be watched over by Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva.”
Just as he was thinking he really did not understand at all, Kazuki suddenly rose and lifted his head toward the sky.
When Monk Hyeongak followed his gaze, something had already stopped in midair and was beginning to descend toward the Daeungjeon Hall.
*
Geuru opened her eyes in a daze.
She couldn’t stay asleep because the top of her head felt itchy.
“I’m sleepy……”
Haaaaam!
She closed the status window that was wavering before her eyes and yawned widely when—
“……?”
For some reason, her head felt heavy.
It was completely different from the sluggish heaviness she felt after waking up.
It really felt as if something had been placed on top of her head.
“……Huuung?”
Her head tilted in puzzlement.
Geuru crawled over to the vanity on all fours and checked the mirror.
“Gasp!”
Meanwhile, Mephisto, who had woken at the sound of Geuru’s voice, rubbed his eyes and fluttered up, while Veilak wriggled out of the bag and approached with a yawn……
“Mephii…… hic! Veii……”
Geuru’s face, as she looked back at them, was a mess of tears and snot.
“Piiit!”
“Myuut!”
Startled, Mephisto and Veilak quickly began patting and soothing Geuru.
“What does Geuru do?”
Geuru must have been terribly shocked, because her shoulders trembled as she sniffled.
Sniff!
Lately, everyone had been saying that her sprout looked fresh or green, so she had thought it was strange.
Geuru buried her face in both hands.
A stem had risen among the sprouts on the crown of her head, and a bud had formed at its end.
It had grown.
No matter how she checked, the sprout was clearly growing. To make matters worse, it even had a bud.
On top of Geuru’s head!
Wasn’t it supposed to return to being a snow rabbit once it gained strength again?
What if it never separated like this and kept growing on top of Geuru’s head forever?
Geuru truly felt as if the world before her eyes was spinning, and she shouted in a jumble of words.
“I became a tree. Geuru really turned into Groot!”