Urban Vagabond: Reload

My first meeting with the Death King had not gone well.

At the time, I was in the middle of quietly cleaning up the mess that had just happened, and on top of that, I was already dealing with enough bullshit from not having properly replenished my spiritual energy.

I was irritated enough to die as it was, and then some random old man with age spots all over his face suddenly said this to me.

“Kid. How about becoming my disciple?”

He wanted me to become his disciple. Said I should use those precious eyes of mine to see the world differently.

What kind of bullshit was that?

See it differently? See what differently?

These damned eyes already made my life exhausting enough as it was. What was I supposed to learn now and start seeing differently?

I turned him down flat.

Learn it? My ass.

Like I had nothing better to learn.

This was the very thing I had been forced to master in my previous life after getting worked half to death.

Learn it again?

Sure, I probably could have, but—

Why the hell would I learn it from you?

From that old man. From the Death King.

As far as I could tell, he had nothing to teach me.

Trying to learn anything from someone who’s got a god stuffed inside his body. Give me a break.

The Death King served a god.

A lesser god, just below the higher gods. Or no, maybe lesser god was the wrong way to put it. It would be more accurate to say he served some vague thing stuck awkwardly in between.

And that was the end of it.

Once you start serving a god, there’s nothing left to talk about.

That was something my grandmother used to say from time to time.

If she had a few regrets in life, the first was passing this power on to me, her grandson.

And the second was—

Serving a god.

Serving a god itself.

It sounded natural enough. Shamans serve gods.

But my grandmother called it a mistake.

She said it was closer to being bound than serving.

She had chosen that path herself, so she had no way around it.

But she told me not to do the same.

Even if I reached the point of spirit sickness and my entire body was wracked with pain, she said I should never serve a god.

I kept that promise.

Fortunately, I had never suffered spirit sickness in the first place.

Something about how the spiritual energy I carried was too strong, so no god would dare covet my body.

Someone had once been shocked that an ordinary human could manage such a thing.

But it was true.

Which is exactly why he’s so strange.

That was what made Yoo Cheongil unusual. He moved in and out of my body as if it were nothing.

Even though it was a body that even the higher gods could not touch lightly.

Just how was he doing that to a body even the higher gods could not handle?

Well, whatever. That’s not important right now.

That could wait.

“Are you really not going to talk?”

“......Ghhhhh.......”

Squatting down, I asked the old man groaning in front of me.

The Death King.

The old man I ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) had first seen as a child was now too busy staggering in front of me.

He probably was not in pain because of his body.

...Well, the Sword Emperor did beat the shit out of him, so that’s not completely untrue.

He probably did hurt a little.

But what was hurting him now was not a matter of flesh.

“How... how can something like this even be possible?”

The Death King spoke in a disbelieving tone. He looked like he genuinely could not believe what he was experiencing.

“If you’re asking how it’s possible... well.”

Wasn’t it just because I could do it?

“What kind of absurd answer is that—!”

Cough!

The Death King hacked violently.

No blood came out.

But the pain only worsened.

“......Let go...!”

A scream rang out.

For the record, all I was doing was pressing a hand to the Death King’s forehead. I was not actually grabbing anything.

Physically, anyway.

What I was holding here was—

His soul.

The Death King’s soul itself.

And, along with it, the scruff of the god hiding inside.

“Seriously.”

I could feel my irritation rising.

“Why the hell did you have to go and fling curses around? What was so important that you wanted to screw him over so badly you ended up like this yourself?”

He had not even aimed it at me. He had thrown the curse at Thousand-Mile True Eye.

I had no idea what for.

“Talk.”

I did not have all day.

“If you don’t, the god inside you dies here.”

I was very, very pissed off right now.

“......Kill... a god?”

He looked like he did not believe me.

Even though the god inside his body was already screaming bloody murder.

Then again—

Gods are beings that don’t die.

Immortal.

Once a soul became one of those higher existences, it lived forever.

They reached transcendence and became something so far removed from humanity that death no longer clung closely to them.

But that did not mean they were truly immortal.

“Do you think gods would be any different? You deal with them the same way you exorcise evil spirits. Do you really think reaching transcendence means their karma has all been washed away?”

Exorcising a soul.

Or guiding it to final release.

Those concepts were built on erasing the karma and lingering attachments bound up inside it.

Transcendence was closer to forgetting.

They had not lost those things. They had simply forgotten them and left them behind.

Just because they had scrubbed them out from within did not mean they were truly gone.

Just because they had forgotten did not mean the memory itself had vanished.

That’s why I hate gods.

They forget what they have done, then convince themselves they are noble.

How pitiful.

How pathetic.

Crrrk.

I let spiritual energy flow out through my fingertips, and the Death King’s body shook violently.

“Ugh... ahhk....”

“If you touch karma, things wither away. Human or god, it’s all the same. Isn’t that simple? The god you serve is no different in the end.”

“......How can... a mere human....”

“Not a mere human.”

I smiled.

Because that line was ridiculous.

“It’s because I’m human. Because humans are the ones who go on living and continue piling up karma.”

I could feel the god.

Its screams reached the tips of my fingers.

If I loosened the chain just a little more—

I could burn it.

I could burn the god away.

I had not done it yet in this life, but it was not impossible.

The fact that he had hurled a curse at Thousand-Mile True Eye kept scraping at my insides.

Had I really been that close with him?

I did not think I had.

So why the hell was this irritating me so much?

Click.

I loosened the seal.

Maybe the Death King needed to be stomped on at least once.

Thinking that, I started to put more force into it—

Crack—!

“......!”

I felt something split.

I stopped channeling spiritual energy.

[Get a hold of yourself.]

I heard the Heavenly Demon’s voice.

...Heavenly Demon?

[So you can finally hear me now.]

...Were you saying something?

Had he been talking this whole time?

I had not heard a thing.

[Do not let yourself be bewitched by the sword. Your emotions flared too high, and now the Divine Sword is starting to drag you around.]

Dragged around by the Divine Sword?

At those words, I looked down at the sword at my waist.

The Divine Sword had seemed perfectly still.

What the hell?

Only then did I realize it.

Something was rippling inside the sword.

My eyes widened.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

The energy flowing from the sword was affecting my soul.

Was that why everything spilling out of me had turned so violent?

I immediately started to pull my hand away from the Death King.

But then—

“......Young Cult Leader...!”

The Death King suddenly spoke to me.

“Young Cult Leader...?”

“......It was the Young Cult Leader’s order.”

My eyes narrowed.

The Young Cult Leader of the Demonic Cult had ordered this?

Ordered him to throw that curse at Thousand-Mile True Eye?

“You? The Young Cult Leader gave the order to you? Why?”

The threat was working.

I drew back the spiritual energy I had been letting out and pretended I was still pressing him.

“.......”

He said nothing.

Watching him, the corner of my mouth lifted.

“Do I need to rip that god apart before you’ll—”

“......It should originally have been my master’s task, but because of you, he couldn’t move. So I did it in his place.”

“......Oh?”

So because Bow Ghost had shown up in spirit form, gotten hit, and could not act, the Death King had stepped in instead?

And the Young Cult Leader had ordered that?

Is that actually true?

I had no idea whether it was true or not.

So I had to check.

This is dangerous.

The seal binding my body had already cracked.

Probably because I had gotten into the habit of loosening it too often lately.

Still—

I have to use it now.

I had no choice.

I pushed the seal a little harder.

Craaack.

Along with the sensation of a shallow fracture spreading through it, I interfered directly with his soul.

“......Kkh!”

The Death King felt something invading his soul and lurched.

I looked at him and asked,

“Say it again. Was what you just said true?”

“......I-It was true.”

The texture of his soul did not change.

He was telling the truth.

The moment I felt that, I pulled my energy back at once.

Fortunately, the seal had not broken.

But—

One more time and that’s the end.

If I used it once more, the seal would break completely.

I knew it instinctively.

“......The Young Cult Leader told you to throw a curse. Why?”

“I do not know why...... It was only a transaction.”

“A transaction? Then what were you supposed to exchange?”

“.......”

“So it’s a restriction, then.”

The fact that he could not answer meant there was a binding restriction on him.

Then if I broke that, would things change?

The thought crossed my mind, but—

I don’t have enough room to break a restriction right now.

That would have to wait.

My martial arts alone were not enough to force it open, and this was not the time to use anything else.

Then I’ll have to do something else.

Forget hearing the full answer.

There was something more urgent to deal with.

“I’ll hear the reason later. For now, I guess I need to shut your mouth first.”

“What?”

Crrrik.

“......!”

The Death King’s eyes went wide enough to burst.

My energy locked something down inside his soul.

It was only possible because I had already established contact.

“Anything that happened today—if you mention it carelessly, your soul will explode on the spot. No, saying it’ll get crushed to paste is probably more accurate.”

I said it with a bright smile.

“So.”

As I spoke, the smile vanished.

“Keep your mouth shut. Got it?”

The Death King’s body shook.

Even the forest that had been rustling in the wind fell silent for that moment.

*****

After dealing with the Death King, I went to check on Thousand-Mile True Eye.

Fortunately, he did not seem to have any real problem.

He did seem puzzled by the choice I had made, but he did not go so far as to blame me for it.

At most, I could feel a faint trace of concern from him.

He was already the kind of man who seemed to live with a permanent headache, and now he looked even worse.

So I told him we could talk later and left for now.

Then I returned to the lodgings.

“......Young Cult Leader.”

I had never really believed all that crap about agreements, talks, and working for peace.

But—

“That bastard.”

In the end, he really had tried to make a move from the shadows.

To think he had actually thrown a curse at Thousand-Mile True Eye.

The Alliance Leader was a Heaven-Beyond-Heaven level martial artist. A curse like that could never pierce him.

Thousand-Mile True Eye, on the other hand, was old and practically no different from an ordinary person.

Something like that would work on him all too well.

That son of a bitch.

My eyes went cold.

At the same time, I looked at the Divine Sword and forced my emotions back down.

I had to be careful that what happened earlier did not happen again.

“So that wasn’t your doing, then.”

I asked the Heavenly Demon.

Was what had happened earlier—the thing that had stirred up my anger—a side effect of the Divine Sword?

[The Divine Sword reacts to its owner’s emotions. It amplifies them further. That is not the same thing as exploiting emotions that were not already there.]

So it did not draw them out.

It magnified them.

He had said the same thing before.

[Do not let the sword consume you. If you let yourself be enthralled by a blade this trivial, how do you expect to become the heavens?]

“......The heavens, my ass. Who said I was going to do that?”

What a joke.

With the Young Cult Leader sitting there in plain sight, what kind of Heavenly Demon was he even talking about?

Did this old man seriously want me to lead the Demonic Cult?

Ridiculous.

If anything...

Right now, I was dying to screw that side over instead.

[To screw them over, you say.......]

The Heavenly Demon reacted to that thought.

[I happen to have an excellent idea.]

“......Hm?”

The Heavenly Demon spoke.

[Well? Want to hear it?]

And his voice sounded very, very excited.