Ch.250Side Story: Synchronization – 2

“Grrraaaaaah! Uuuuuuugh!”

Vacant eyes with no focus, a voice that seemed to tear as if scraping against vocal cords, and enough brute strength to send people flying with bare hands despite clearly being a magic-type hunter based on the weapons and defensive gear they carried.

All of it matched perfectly with the characteristics of the murderous ghost in my memories.

“Aaaaargh! My arm! My arm!”

The woman tore off one of the arms of a hunter sprawled on the ground. Red blood spurted out, and a horrific scream echoed. The woman greedily licked the blood on her hands.

Only then did the onlookers realize the situation and start fleeing, though some idiots remained to record videos on their smartphones. Others stood at a distance watching as if it wasn’t their problem.

“What are you doing?! Run away! I said run! You stupid bastards! Stop recording and get out of here!”

A healer who had moved to safety shouted at those still lingering, telling them to flee. No one seemed to be listening.

‘I’ll have to smash all those phones.’

When people stay to film while someone’s limbs are being torn off right in front of them, they have no right to complain if their devices get destroyed.

After confirming that Nika had cast perception-hindering magic around us to kill our presence, I cast the same spell on myself and rushed forward. I stopped between the woman and her fellow hunter just before she could finish him off.

Grrrr, the unfocused eyes scanned me. I could hear people nearby saying, “Keep recording, keep recording.”

‘Yeah, record all you want.’

It’s not like anything will remain anyway.

“Kyaaaaaaah!”

The woman charged at me with a monstrous shriek. I clenched my fist. Pretending to take a stance, I deliberately stomped the ground with all my might. With a thunderous boom, the ground cracked and fragments scattered in all directions.

I timed a shockwave to deliberately send debris flying farther, targeting the smartphones of those pointing cameras in my direction. Sharp pieces of asphalt precisely pierced through just the cameras.

“Kyaaak! My phone!”

“That crazy bastard broke my phone!”

Cries of people with broken smartphones echoed all around. They could claim I broke them all they wanted, but nothing would show up on CCTV anyway. Too bad for them.

I ignored them and used magic to melt the memory cards too. If they could get away with just losing some storage space in a situation where they might have died, they should consider themselves lucky.

I struck the woman’s head as she charged right up to me. She plunged headfirst into the ground. I lifted her up from the ground by her mouth and looked around.

‘Too many eyes watching. I need to subdue her quickly and get out of here.’

I don’t want to become the subject of internet debates about my identity. After roughly memorizing the faces of people around, I struck the woman again. Her body spun in the air.

The force would have been enough to kill a normal person. But except for spinning once in midair, she was fine. Thud—her body fell to the ground, back first.

I grabbed her right arm and pinned her shoulder with my knee while twisting the area below her elbow.

—Crack!

“Graaaaaaah!”

As her shoulder dislocated, her arm rotated nearly 270 degrees, rupturing all muscles, tendons, and ligaments. After confirming that it was too mangled to exert any force, I spun halfway around.

I stomped down on her left leg, shattering it. The femur was crushed, and her thigh flattened. Seeing how the area below the knee was twitching, it seemed she wouldn’t be able to move without healing magic.

I released the twisted right arm and grabbed her left arm, dislocating the shoulder before folding it vertically from the hand. Bones broke through the skin. The entire arm crumpled until her wrist touched her shoulder.

Now for the final touch. I grabbed the woman’s still-intact right leg and twisted it. With the sound of her pelvis shattering, her knee turned backward and the back of her knee forward, twisting the leg a perfect 180 degrees.

“Grrrrrrrk! Kyaaaak!”

I released her leg and stood up. Despite her limbs being devastated, the woman was still struggling to bite me, gnashing her teeth until her front teeth were about to break.

Seeing this, the whispers questioning whether I was overreacting suddenly stopped.

“Who is that person? A hunter?”

“Don’t know. But why does it feel like we can’t see them properly even though we’re looking right at them?”

“Is it magic?”

“There’s magic like that?”

“Why are they hiding their appearance? Can’t we just tell them to show themselves?”

Instead, attention shifted to me. The fact that people couldn’t recognize my appearance despite all this attention meant the perception-hindering magic was working properly.

But even that has its limits. I burned out the internal circuits of those now trying to film me with their smartphones, then dashed into a nearby alley.

“Hey! They’re running away! Catch them!”

As soon as I opened a dimensional gate and rejoined Nika, someone shouted to catch me. Several hunters hurriedly headed toward the alley where I’d disappeared, then lingered at its entrance. A futile effort.

Beatrice was staring at me with round eyes. Understandable, since I’d never shown her such brutality before.

The Heaven God and Demon God were engaged in quiet conversation, their faces full of concern. They seemed troubled by something other than my behavior.

“Why did you suddenly do that, Master?”

“She became a murderous ghost. I thought it was something we’d only see in that other world… I never expected to encounter one on Earth.”

Come to think of it, the Sword Saint was extremely wary and emanated killing intent when she first saw me in the second world, even though I hadn’t killed any magical beasts there. Perhaps it was because the karma continued to cling to me even after returning here.

“I think you’ll need to handle the cleanup, Nika. Take those hunters to the hospital, and bring the murderous ghost to the guild building. Oh, and deal with those whose phones were broken and those who stubbornly stayed to watch.”

“Yes. Leave it to me, Master.”

Nika walked out of the barrier. When the Guild Master of Eternal Guild suddenly appeared, commotion broke out in the area.

“I’m sorry, but it seems we’ll have to postpone our sightseeing. Beatrice, I apologize to you too. Let’s come back another time.”

“I understand, Young Master. Please don’t be too disheartened. I’m fine.”

Having heard Nika call me “Master,” Beatrice promptly addressed me as “Young Master.”

The Heaven God and Demon God were still deep in thought.

“…It’s definitely a murderous ghost. I didn’t want to see such a thing again.”

Former Sword Saint Rachel, now A-rank hunter Kang Ra-hye, shook her head in dismay. She had just returned from seeing the mage hunter imprisoned in Eternal Guild’s basement.

It made sense that memories of murderous ghosts would remain a severe trauma and dark history for the Sword Saint. The trauma related to Karna, and the dark history related to me.

“If karma not only persists on Earth but also accumulates, then all hunters are essentially walking time bombs.”

If the full truth of this incident came to light, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say the entire Earth would be torn apart. The fear that any hunter could snap anywhere, anytime would consume people.

“The good news is that there’s a solution…”

I looked at the two people who had rushed over after receiving my call: Latina and Leona. The Sword Saint smiled warmly at Leona, whom she hadn’t seen in a long time. Leona waved back slightly.

“I understand the situation roughly. What do you need us to do, Mira?”

“If possible, I’d like you to try the ‘Soul Purification’ magic. I’ll have Rosaria try it later too, but it’s an incredibly difficult spell to learn even with a clear mind, so in her current state, it would be pointless.”

From what I’d briefly checked while bringing these two, the five who had engaged in a drinking contest with Erestica were still groaning in pain. They couldn’t possibly learn first world magic in that state.

“Is that all?”

“That and more. Since words alone won’t do it justice compared to experiencing it firsthand, let me show you. Now, repeat after me: La- Smo- Ra.”

“La- Smo Ra.”

“Wrong. You need to drag the sound slightly after ‘mo’.”

“…”

Latina’s face stiffened slightly. If such strict corrections were coming from just the first syllable, she could imagine how severe the rest would be.

“Let me ask one thing. How long is this incantation?”

“Where’s the fun in telling you now? Come on, again. Ka- Gna Sun.”

“Ka- Gna… Wait a minute. Why is it different from before? Did you move to the next part already?”

“No, it’s still the beginning.”

“…?”

Question marks appeared above the heads of all three listeners. This is where the concept would start, of course. After organizing my thoughts for this long-overdue explanation of “magic language,” I spoke.

“You know that the magic language used by nobles is completely different from what we think of as language, right, Latina?”

“Of course I know, since I’m from that world. But I’ve never seen magic where the first syllable changes.”

“Of course not. It was considered mystical even in that world. I didn’t just simulate magic language in my head for no— Actually, never mind. You died after that, Latina. Again: Nagra- Pa- Tala.”

“…”

Leona and Latina’s expressions went from puzzled to sour. Leona cautiously raised her hand.

“Um, Mira. I don’t understand—if it’s the same spell, why does the pronunciation change? There must be a reason.”

“Well… to use an analogy—though it’s not exactly the same, so just take it as a general concept—you both know the English alphabet, right?”

“Yes.”

“I do know it.”

“Depending on where they appear, the same letters can have different pronunciations.”

There was no point in teaching these two in detail, so I decided to just establish that the pronunciation changes.

“…I’ll accept that for now. What does this have to do with the incantation?”

“It’s similar. The pronunciation changes in that way. As I just said, it’s not exactly the same, but that’s the general idea.”

“Even without doing anything special?”

“That’s right.”

“Are there rules?”

“None. You just have to memorize everything. You don’t consciously think about breathing, blinking, swallowing, or positioning your tongue, right? It’s the same principle.”

I heard the Sword Saint trembling with an “Urk…” beside me, caught off guard by my attack, but that wasn’t my concern right now.

“…So to summarize, we need to recite a spell from beginning to end without a single mistake, where there are no rules for changes, it’s extremely long with complex pronunciation, and when it changes, it sounds like a completely different word?”

“Later on, you can skip the incantation. Eventually, you can cast the spell just by reciting it in your head.”

There was a reason I memorized Soul Purification not by name but as “highest-tier status ailment removal magic.”

Rather than unnecessarily remembering it in this world’s language and causing confusion, it was much easier for incantation to bury all related memories and memorize it only in the magic language.

“How are we supposed to do that? I can’t. I’m just going to lie down here, and you can do whatever you want with me, eat me or not. Personally, I’d appreciate it if you did eat me.”

Latina flopped down on the floor. The hesitant Leona also timidly curled up beside her.

‘The reaction I expected.’

I had a similar reaction when I first heard this explanation. I gritted my teeth and managed because my life depended on it; otherwise, I would have given up long ago. Though I didn’t lie down and say “whatever.”

“Isn’t there another way, child?”

“I plan to research this further. We need to determine if the conditions are the same as in that world, or if they’ve been relaxed or intensified. I wanted to let you know that we might have to resort to this method if nothing else works.”

“So as long as the research goes well— I’ll make those kids downstairs work until—”

“No. That won’t be necessary.”

The door suddenly burst open as the Heaven God and Demon God walked in. They seemed to be trying to appear dignified, but they only managed to look solemn at best.

“What do you mean it won’t be necessary?”

“We will solve this problem for you, human.”

“How?”

The Demon God raised her dainty hand triumphantly.