SSS-Class Revival Hunter-Chapter 361: The Scream-Gathering Sky (3)

Before darkness swallowed my vision, the last thing I saw was the Primordial Staff gasping in horror. She probably screamed, too.

However, I couldn’t really understand the mage’s cry. The shadow of the deceased had already torn my throat, and I didn’t unleash my aura to delay my death. My demise was swift and slow at the same time.

[Recreating your killer’s trauma.]

Things around me changed so quickly that my mind couldn’t keep up. Some things flowed quickly while others flowed slowly, blending like water and oil, white and black, and, if I may, soul and soul. Like a snowflake on a brazier, my dead spirit melted into the shadow that killed me.

[Recreating your killer’s trauma.]

She was a fisherwoman born long ago, so that was also who I became. Using tautology, she was me, and I was her. Like when I had become Raviel and then Teacher, in the center of the Human Realm level of trauma, she—I—glared at the sea dyed in wine red.

“The waves are crying.”

The waves were rough, and a harsh scent hung in the air. The fisherwoman knew that water had a smell. On calm, sunny days, the water was clear, but when waves rolled in from afar, salty sweat dripped from the water. Whirlpools churned in those rapids when the foul smell of pooled saliva lingered. Now, the waves were weeping.

“We have to run. The waves are crying,” she said, acting on instinct.

In those days, humans weren’t much different from animals. They said a golden temple rose as tall as a mountain and lay in the vast desert to the south. The people who lived there were all sorcerers who could trap every human voice within odd drawings.

I knew the golden temple was a pyramid and that the sorcery was letters. However, she didn’t. In an age when only a few people could write, this woman was sailing and catching fish.

“We have to run away quickly...”

Rumble—!

The woman turned her boat around and looked behind her. A volcano was erupting in the distance, hot lava spilling from its peak. Black clouds. Lightning. Muddy rain. The volcano howled as if announcing the end of the world.

Instinctively, the woman slowed the boat and steered only where the waves’ tears grew weaker. What should have been a quick trip home took over half a day.

The village was gone. Only a few pieces of driftwood remained on the water’s surface.

Splash!

When the waves hit the cliffs, the driftwood on the rocks swayed gently. There were no survivors. She looked up at the sky. Clouds hung above, but they didn’t come from the sky. The ground had burped these out. These underground clouds were far denser and fouler than those in the sky. The whole dark sea was seeping.

“... I have to run.”

She steered the boat. It wasn’t just her home village that vanished. The next village, the one after that... All of the villages near the shore—each hanging onto a thin thread of life—were gone. Each lost village left at least one survivor, like her.

“Did you survive?”

She nodded. “I survived.”

“The waves are crying. They keep crying.”

The survivors were those who could smell the waves, like me. She—I—answered, “I know. I can feel the waves’ tears, too.”

“Many died. The gods are angry. Should we die, too?”

The fisherwoman gestured at the survivor.

“We have to run. Come on. We have to run away quickly. Follow me.”

“Where?”

“To the largest village.”

They rowed the boat. One became two. Two became three, then four, then five, then sixteen. Sixteen survivors meant sixteen villages had perished. Only those most familiar with the waves had survived.

The largest village had no survivors.

“They’re all dead.”

“No one left. Nothing. Nothing at all.”

She looked back. By now, there were thirty boatmen. Each time they crossed from one village to the next, the language of the survivors became more different from mine.

“Where are we going now?”

The first survivor she had met spoke with the same sounds as her[1]. She could understand them perfectly.

“Sh■ld we die?”

From the sixth village onward, the sounds began to warp. She couldn’t understand them wholly, but the mixed sounds weren’t a problem for her.

“■ is divine punish■t. The anger of the god■.”

After passing through twelve villages, the sounds became grotesque wails. The fisherwoman’s ears buzzed. If she narrowed her eyes and strained to hear, she could make the words out, but it was hard.

“■■ weeping. ■ ke ■■ in■.”

She couldn’t really understand the survivors after twenty-four villages. All of them could feel the waves’ tears. That was the only tie that bound them together.

The fisherwoman looked up at the sky. It had already been many days. The world was dark and cold. The fishermen huddled and gathered straw to cover themselves, but their teeth still chattered. Even now, someone’s teeth were chattering. She—I—heard it.

She said, “We must escape.”

“Whe■e?”

“Somewhere.”

It was the Little Ice Age. The time that had given people prosperous rain and steady waves for thousands of years was now ending. The volcanic eruption had only hastened this. I knew this from books, but she knew it by instinct.

South. To the south along the coast. Following destroyed villages and old ruins, they all headed south.

“■■■■!”

“■■■■ ■■■■! ■■■!” 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

After who knew how many villages, over sixty boatmen were following her. They finally reached a surviving village, but she couldn’t understand the villagers’ cries at all.

The villagers held spears and threw stones. The spears pierced the survivor fishermen’s chests while stones smashed their heads.

Splash. Splash.

The boats capsized, and bodies fell in. The man she had met in the first village turned to look at her.

“Should we die?”

She was always asked this question. For the first time, she offered an answer. “No.”

A massacre followed. The boatmen picked up their stone knives and killed the villagers. All the survivors were the best boatmen around, and that included her. Killing people was easier than steering a boat.

After the fight, she called the man from the forty-eighth village and asked him, “What are these people saying?”

He was a fisherman who lived relatively near this place, so he should still be familiar with the area’s sounds.

“■■■... ■■■ ■■ ■■■...!”

“They seem to say we’ll suffer from divine punishment,” the forty-eighth survivor translated, adding that he wasn’t sure of how accurate he was. “And they called us pirates.”

“Pirates? What’s a pirate?” the fisherwoman asked.

“I think it means people of the sea.”

From that village on, the survivors were no longer called fishermen but pirates. The sixty pirates became ninety, their numbers increasing considerably. Like flotsam gathered by waves or young animals huddling for warmth, the survivors from each ruined seaside village came to the fisherwoman.

One boatman survivor translated the words of another.

“■■ has ■■.”

“The world has ended.”

“■■■ ■■ad.”

“Everyone is dead.”

“■■ld ■■■ ■■■?”

“Should we die too?”

A hundred fishermen stared at her. She now knew the answer she had to give. It was clear.

“No.”

Even before they had become two hundred, the answer was the same.

“No.”

It didn’t change when they became three hundred.

“No.”

She answered the same way each time.

“We should run. Follow me.”

Five hundred boats followed her.

“■■■■!”

Battles erupted wherever they went. They didn’t know why they had to fight, but what they could gain by fighting was clear. The villages that hadn’t been destroyed had grain, clothes, and sharp stone knives. The only thing they didn’t have was the reason the fishermen had to turn down the fight.

“■■■! ■■, ■■■ ■■■■...!”

South. South along the coast. Sweeping through villages and leaving only ruins behind, the fishermen continued heading south. South.

“■■■■■■!”

The world was cold and dark. Like white shells on sea cliffs, they clung to life by their fingernails, so the world didn’t end yet.

“■■■...”

Splash.

In the big village that was on fire, the fisherwoman swung her stone knife.

“■■■■...”

“■■, ■■■ ■■■■■...”

“■■ ■ ■■■■...”

The people of the big village wept. The fisherwoman looked around the corpses and the weeping people who would soon become corpses themselves.

She asked, “What are these people saying?”

She called the survivor from the twelfth village, who then called one from the thirty-second village. The thirty-second survivor asked for the fifty-first survivor, who called the one hundredth survivor. This one searched for the one hundred seventieth survivor, who soon found the two hundred fifty-second survivor.

“Why do you want to understand what these people are saying?” the five hundred eighty-first survivor asked.

Exchanging one question and one answer with the five hundred eighty-first survivor required translating dozens of times. The way the people spoke resembled waves. The fishermen’s whispers were layered many times.

“These people of the village are sorcerers,” the fisherwoman also whispered. “They know the sorcery that traps sound.”

She picked up a clay tablet and showed it to the fishermen. A drawing was stamped on it. She could not read or reproduce it, but that was what sorcery was.

“With their sorcery, we can also leave our sound behind.”

“Why do you want to do that? Waves exist only when they break. A sound vanishes. That is the way of waves, and we follow the way of waves.”

“This is the somewhere we can escape to.” She pointed at the clay tablet, meeting each fisherman’s gaze one by one. She wanted them to look at this tablet, this somewhere. “We must escape here. This is where I told you to follow me to. We’re almost there. Tell the others. And what are these villagers saying?”

The waves stopped.

“I don’t know,” the five hundred eighty-first wave said. “I don’t know. I don’t know what they’re saying.”

The two hundred fifty-second wave said she didn’t know. The one hundred seventieth, one hundredth, fifty-first, thirty-second, and twelfth waves all said softly that they didn’t know. As the waves washed away, they all made the same sound.

“No one knows.”

A wave came to her feet and lapped at her one last time before vanishing. Now, she could only weep. The scent of tears was near. The fisherwoman knew why the scent had never ceased. Perhaps she had known all along what would happen. She flung the clay tablet toward a blazing fire with a thump.

“Where should we go now?”

“I’m sorry,” she answered.

“Whe■ should we go ■?”

“I’m sorry.”

The fire roared.

“■■ should ■■ g■ ■?”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated.

The fire crackled.

“■■ ■■■ ■■ ■■■?”

“I’m sorry.”

The crackling became quiet.

[The trauma recreation has been completed.]

[It has been confirmed that the ego of the subject under the Skill penalty is intact.]

[Ending the Skill penalty.]

***

I thought I could hear the sound of waves in the distance.

“What were you thinking?!”

I staggered to my feet. I didn’t go back twenty-four hours like I usually do. This was the underground floor, and time flowed differently here than on other floors. Or did the Pillars, the Tower managers, stop my Skill activation? Did my timeline no longer have absolute freedom since my fox god wasn’t with me? Either way, it didn’t matter.

Grrrr...

Before my eyes was a shadow whose life had been reduced to noises. She could make no meaningful sounds at all, only growl. The shadow was only a remnant of who she had been.

Clink!

Bound by chains, the shadow thrashed about as if ready to lunge at me at any moment.

“So, you can live the life of the dead by using your trauma penalty? That is why you can judge more accurately than I can, because I can only watch people’s lives? That’s your answer? Hah. Yes, that may be true, but didn’t you mention asking the soul directly? Even if you can watch their trauma, no matter how close you get to the person, it’s not the soul directly speaking what’s on their m—”

I drew my sword and cut down the shadow. The mage didn’t have time to stop me.

“What?” she blurted out.

My sword cut through the shadow, who didn’t even scream. Perhaps she was already screaming. As such, she was cut down easily. She scattered like ashes and vanished.

“You... What in the world did you just...” the Primordial Staff stammered.

[Activating the Skill.]

Unlock the Skill Card.

It was the gold card I had gotten long ago.

Monster Legion Reincarnation

Class: SSS

Effects: You are able to summon those you killed as monsters. The deceased won’t have their original abilities. However, if you wish, the deceased will have their memory and appearance. If not, they are summoned as monsters like goblins, orcs, zombies, and skeletons.

I had lived as the shadow and located her coordinates. I then cut down the shadow that became a scream, so I could summon the scream.

[Activating Monster Legion Reincarnation.]

Therefore, all the conditions were met. The ash that had vanished in the air rose again from below as black liquid, which soon took a form. I knew the person’s eyes and face. She had the gestures of someone who was once me. A woman with blue eyes like the sea blinked at me.

The chamber was silent. The Primordial Staff watched us with her mouth closed. The other Pillars remained silent, too. Only the former shadow and I could speak.

The shadow asked, “Who are you?”

I thought I could hear the sound of waves in the distance.

“Hi,” I replied.

I didn’t use my mother tongue or let the Tower translate my words. I spoke the sounds that I had learned by living her life.

The sounds were coarse and held the scent of sea, like waves rushing in from the distant sea, crashing against the cliffs for just a moment before vanishing far into the white space.

“First Wave,” I said. I could say her name and tell her what I could become for her. “I am your last wave.”

I’ll be your somewhere.

1. Fisherwoman doesn't have the concept of a language. ☜