Crunch—!

A black spirit-mass shot out.

Baleful force.

The moment I saw it spraying toward Thousand-Mile Divine Eye, I threw myself forward.

I reached out, caught the incoming baleful force in my hand, and crushed it.

“...Hm?”

Thousand-Mile Divine Eye looked at me in confusion.

“What are you doing?”

“Ah, my apologies. A bug flew past.”

I tucked away my trembling hand. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

Was she insane?

She fired baleful force here?

It was lunacy.

No matter how invisible a method it was unless you could see spirit forms, this was still broad daylight. She was scattering curses in the middle of the day?

Was that Bow Ghost’s doing?

I had no proof beyond the circumstances.

Still—

Who else would do something like this?

There was no one else who fit the situation more cleanly.

At this point in time, who besides Bow Ghost would be firing off baleful force?

But she shouldn’t be in any condition to do that right now.

What I had fired into Bow Ghost last night should have affected her. If it had worked the way I intended, she should have been unable to do anything involving spiritual energy for a while.

I went out of my way to let it miss her soul.

I had taken the trouble to touch only the body and leave the soul alone, and this was what she did in return?

And that wasn’t all.

It had been a considerable amount.

Enough that it should have affected the person who launched it too.

At that level, it should put a strain on the soul.

No, more than strain.

Enough to build karma.

And she had just thrown something like that around in broad daylight?

I narrowed my eyes.

The numbness in my hand was already gone.

Still, it would probably affect my spiritual energy, so for now I shoved it off to one corner.

So this is why she didn’t bother disguising herself this time.

Had that been the plan?

But at the same time...

Was Bow Ghost really the sort of person to go for something like this?

I hadn’t known her long, but she didn’t strike me that way.

If it wasn’t Bow Ghost, that was a problem too.

Even if it was her, it was strange. I didn’t take her for someone who would rush into a move like this.

Tch...

I clicked my tongue inwardly.

By then the Young Cult Leader was already on his way out.

The talks ended with my face hard as stone.

How was I supposed to look into this now?

That irritating question barely had time to settle before the culprit turned up far faster than I expected.

*****

“...And what exactly is this supposed to be?”

Right after the meeting ended, Divine Spear had sent word for me to come see him a little later.

About half a shichen from now.

Since I had some time to spare, I headed off to meet someone else first.

And then I found this.

“What’s going on here?”

I asked the old man standing in front of me.

He was the one-armed swordsman, the Sword Emperor.

At my question, the old man looked back at me with calm eyes.

“I caught a bug.”

“...”

That flat answer sounded familiar.

A bug?

For a bug, though—

“Isn’t it a little too big?”

And by a little, I meant very.

“Urgh...”

Something was sprawled on the ground in front of the Sword Emperor.

An old man with a small frame and a face thick with liver spots.

I frowned as I looked at him.

Because I knew exactly who the “bug” the Sword Emperor had caught was.

Holding back a sigh, I asked him,

“What are you doing here?”

The old man was—

“The Death King.”

One of the Five Kings Under Heaven, and the one said to be the strangest of them all.

The Death King.

“...Kgh...”

Twisting in pain, the Death King looked up at me.

There was something aggrieved in his eyes that I couldn’t quite make out.

“Why... are you here of all people?”

It was obvious what he was asking.

Why the Sword Emperor was inside the Alliance.

A man known to have vanished was suddenly here, so of course he’d find it strange.

At that point, the Sword Emperor looked at me and said,

“I had someone to teach.”

“...Someone to teach?”

That caught me off guard.

I hadn’t expected him to say that out loud.

“Don’t tell me... you’re actually raising this brat?”

“Who knows.”

What did he mean, who knows?

He had practically said it already.

I stared at him in disbelief.

No, that wasn’t the important part right now.

“Death King. What are you doing here?”

“......”

The Death King didn’t answer.

I glared at him.

Ha.

I knew the moment I saw him.

“So it was you, wasn’t it? You were the one who fired off the baleful force.”

“...What are you talking about?”

He was trying to deny it.

That made me let out a hollow laugh.

“Some things aren’t worth hiding. I was wondering how anyone could still be standing after firing off that much. Turns out you weren’t standing at all.”

I knew the instant I laid eyes on him.

Right. There was no way someone could fling that kind of thing around in broad daylight and walk away fine.

His entire condition was already in shambles.

Fatigue had built up in his soul; it was visibly unstable.

The karma had rebounded hard enough to put a strain on his body too.

That was why he was collapsed like that.

At that point, just moving his body would’ve been difficult.

Though it’s almost impressive that he got caught by the Sword Emperor.

He probably hadn’t expected to run into him here.

Then again, neither had I.

“Do you have any idea where you are? This is inside the Murim Alliance. Someone like you should know better than anyone what happens if you go around pulling that kind of stunt.”

“...Kgh.”

The Death King bit down on his lip.

He looked deeply aggrieved.

“This is all because of you, isn’t it?”

“...Why me?”

“Just what...!”

The Death King started to speak, then looked at the Sword Emperor.

He was watching his mood.

I was wondering what exactly he was so cautious about when—

Crunch—!

“...!!”

The Sword Emperor abruptly stepped on the Death King’s ankle.

The Death King screamed soundlessly.

Apparently it hurt badly enough that he couldn’t even make a sound.

I widened my eyes at the sudden move.

Then the Sword Emperor said,

“If you are here, does that mean she is here as well?”

“...Ghk...”

“I asked whether the thing that ought to be buried in the North Sea is here now.”

Bow Ghost.

The Sword Emperor wanted to know where she was.

No, more than wanted to know.

The feeling coming off him wasn’t mere curiosity.

...This feels like...

Like if he found her, he’d kill her on the spot.

The Heavenly Demon was like that too, and now the Sword Emperor as well.

Why did every last one of them act like they wanted to tear Bow Ghost apart the moment she came up?

“Then that is answer enough. The fact that you crawled down from that disgusting mountain tells me what I need to know.”

“......Sword... Emperor.”

“One thing, though—I think I should hear it from your own mouth. If you fail to answer by the time I count to three, I will cut off an ankle. I will give you four chances.”

Four chances by cutting off one ankle at a time.

Which meant—

...Two ankles and two wrists.

If he didn’t answer, the Sword Emperor was going to cut off all four.

A chilling warning.

“One.”

The moment the Sword Emperor spoke—

“...I cannot betray my master.”

The Death King shouted through his old voice.

“Two—”

“You think I would tell you that my master is here...!? I never will.”

“......”

“......”

At that, I fell silent.

That loyalty was even smaller and shallower than I’d expected.

“...So she is here.”

The Sword Emperor lifted his foot as soon as he heard that.

Then he said,

“We will train later. There is something I need to do first.”

“Excuse me? Wait—”

He left those words behind and vanished right in front of my eyes.

He was seriously leaving me here alone with this lunatic?

“......”

I stared blankly at the situation.

The Death King was still groaning, but at least he looked slightly better than before.

“...Huu... hhk...”

“...Are you all right? Honestly, at your age, why are you running around doing things like this?”

When I said that, the Death King hacked out a coughing fit and glared at me.

“...You bastard...”

The look in his eyes was different now.

The earlier grievance had turned into hostility.

“What exactly did you do to my master?”

“What do you mean?”

I denied it on instinct.

But—

“Ever since she went to meet you and came back, her condition has been strange. What did you do?”

Her condition had been strange.

At that, all I could really do was shrug.

There wasn’t much point denying it anymore.

“What do you mean, what did I do? She picked a fight first, so I answered it.”

“Answered it...?”

“Yes. Who told her to come in spirit form? For people who should know better, none of you seem to have any sense of danger. If she came to me [N O V E L I G H T] like that, what else was I supposed to think except that she wanted to get taught a lesson?”

“What nonsense—!”

The Death King flared up at my words.

“You expect me to believe my master lost to you just because she came in spirit form? Ridiculous.”

“But that is what happened.”

“...Impossible.”

Why was it so hard for him to believe?

No, fine, not believing it was one thing.

But did he really have to disbelieve it that badly?

The facts were sitting right in front of him.

“I acknowledge that you are exceptional. Even I saw you and coveted your talent. I will admit that much. But even so, are you saying you are enough to pressure my master?”

“...Ah. That.”

A memory from childhood flickered through my head.

Become my disciple.

That was what the Death King had said to me the first time he saw me.

It had happened at a time when I had no choice but to use spiritual energy, right around the incident involving Yeongsun.

And when I heard those words, my answer had been this:

“I told you back then too.”

At the time, I hadn’t bothered hiding it.

I hadn’t thought there was any need to.

So the answer I gave the Death King was—

“Why would I?”

I had said it with a smile.

That didn’t just mean I had no intention of becoming his disciple.

It meant—

“I guess you never understood what I meant.”

Even now, after all this time, it seemed he still didn’t understand what I had meant back then.

This was what those words meant:

“Why would I ever lower myself to become your disciple?”

“...!”

“If I had nothing better to do, maybe. But yours? Don’t be absurd.”

If it had been a question of martial skill, that would have been one thing.

But when the Death King spoke of taking me as a disciple, he meant the business of spirit-work—dealing with spiritual energy.

So why would I ever go?

“At best, you’re just someone bound to a petty god, incapable of handling even that.”

I lowered myself and looked at the Death King.

More precisely, I was speaking to the god inside him.

“To learn from someone who bows his head to a god, grovels before it, and gets dragged around because he cannot even control it?”

I couldn’t understand that.

My grandmother, who had wanted me to stay away from this path, and Chief Baek, who had taught me, were not people who bowed to gods.

At best, they treated them like companions.

At worst, like tools.

What was there to learn from people who couldn’t even manage that much and spent their lives being dragged around instead?

“That would be idiotic.”

“...You little—!”

“Enough of that.”

I reached out.

My fingertip touched the Death King’s forehead.

The instant my index finger made contact, his body twitched slightly.

It looked like the Sword Emperor had sealed his points before leaving.

That made things easier for me.

“Death King. Why did you fire baleful force at Thousand-Mile Divine Eye?”

“......”

No answer.

Fine. That didn’t matter.

“The Sword Emperor said you had four chances. Unfortunately, I don’t really enjoy chopping up bodies and beating people to pieces like that.”

And I didn’t care for giving people too many chances either.

Click.

I loosened the ring.

Then—

Wooooooo—!!

“...!!!”

Cold, dreadful spiritual energy burrowed into the Death King’s body.

“You get one chance. So please answer quickly.”

Hands and feet came in pairs.

But the soul—

there was only one.

All I could do was hope the Death King made his choice quickly.

It wouldn’t take very long to crush a soul.