Ch.25Black Mage (4)

The moment I set foot on the ground, I staggered from the pain and fatigue that enveloped my entire body.

It wasn’t just physical unsteadiness. The mental exhaustion was equally formidable.

Even elephants and whales, often discussed as the sturdiest creatures on Earth, only had health ratings of 17 to 18.

To think that even with a homunculus body, which was a level above such creatures, I could feel this exhausted.

I understood why ordinary humans couldn’t approach this place, and why the mage before me was so bewildered to see me breaking through.

This shouldn’t normally happen. I straightened my wobbling body and gasped for breath.

It truly lived up to the phrase “deathly difficult.” If I weren’t a homunculus, I would have collapsed and died by now.

When I spat out bloody phlegm from beneath my pressed-down helmet, the black mage retreated hesitantly.

She and I were in an ossuary. Countless corpses in the immeasurable, unfathomable facility were being revived in forbidden forms.

All of this was merely the effect of the magical power emanating from the mage before me. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but wonder.

What reasons led these people to be buried here, and what circumstances made them rise again in anger?

What I felt crossing that sea of death was clearly rage. A violent anger directed at all living things.

Naturally, they tried to grab and kill me to prevent anything living from passing through, but they couldn’t reach a homunculus whose manner of death was predetermined.

I was just terribly tired, in pain as if dying.

And a little sorrowful and distressed.

I corrected my body as it tried to stagger again and glared at the woman before me.

She had once been beautiful. It was evident in her features.

Now I noticed she wore a ring on her finger.

Since this game applied conventions similar to Earth’s, a ring on the fourth finger was, as in my former world, a wedding ring.

“Where on earth…?”

The woman’s cracked voice drummed against my ears. I must have briefly lost consciousness, as the ground seemed closer than before.

Drawing my longsword from nowhere to support myself, I barely managed to stand. A cracking sound came from my waist.

It was the sound of muscles tearing and bones breaking. I barely swallowed the groan escaping through my clenched teeth as the woman retreated in fear.

Of course, I came down from above to kill you. I couldn’t say those words.

Because there were memories flickering before my eyes that weren’t mine.

It was a vast field. Small hands held a staff, herding sheep.

A cheerful-looking dog played and helped gather the sheep, while not far away, a man holding a weapon called a staff sling was laughing.

These weren’t my memories. The person was short. The hands were small, and the head was somewhat different from mine.

Golden hair close to honey-brown. My dazed gaze fell upon the mage.

Her hair was now dry and faded, but it must have once been the same color I had seen.

These were her memories, not mine.

Memories from before she became a black mage.

“You broke through death to come down here?”

The woman’s voice, tinged with fear, echoed. In the vast ossuary, candle flames swayed left and right.

Her memories were being shown to me.

Due to the magical power filling this space.

Soon, as if confirming my suspicion, many images passed before my eyes.

They were various memories. They felt like film frames flipping by quickly. Yet their meaning, their emotions, were felt vividly.

Fields burning. People dying. Family burning. There was betrayal, and there were foolish choices.

She watched her husband die coldly in her hands.

Because of what she herself had done.

Though I couldn’t grasp the exact situation, she had lost her entire family due to something she couldn’t control.

This wasn’t uncommon in this world. All humans in Grim Darker possessed magical power, and many caused disasters by failing to control it.

Moreover, this time there had been her choice. Though blurry, I could see it.

An entity from beyond the sky showing interest in her, offering a contract, and her accepting it without any doubt.

The price of that deal was the death of everything she loved.

This too was a common tragedy.

But that didn’t mean the person experiencing it could dismiss it as common.

Her despair and regret were vividly transmitted to me.

The mental anguish like a churning chest and severed intestines.

A sudden surge of nausea. My body instinctively bent over, just like the woman in the memory who was hunching over to vomit.

This is dangerous. She might try to stab me with a dagger rather than magic. In this state, counterattacking wouldn’t be easy.

I desperately raised my head, but the woman didn’t seem interested in attacking.

She was clutching her head and crying.

The memories lingering in the ossuary were eating away at her. Tears flowing down her face turned red, soaking her clothes.

I need to kill her now. I somehow raised my fallen body again. Taking a single step forward was incredibly difficult, but I gritted my teeth.

“Urgh…”

Crack! The sound of broken bones realigning. I took two steps forward, hearing sounds of bones I didn’t know were broken, then fell again.

What struck me as I lay defenseless was memory.

The woman’s memory. Emotions and memories scattered in fragments because I refused to accept them.

Evidence that the black mage, who had seemed like a monster in human skin, was once human.

The wrong answer she drew to overcome those thoughts and pain.

It touched my mind.

In the vision I was seeing, she had already become part of the Research Faction.

Along with a voice whispering if she didn’t want to know about the burned land they had found.

Why things had turned out this way, what this world really was.

She was tempted by the question of whether she wanted to know. She researched it.

It wasn’t about reviving her husband or bringing peace to her family.

She focused on something more fundamental.

She began her research to find the truth that would answer her questions.

That was the Research Faction. Those who sought to approach the truth of the world, even through twisted and broken methods.

No, rather, they were a fanatical faction who believed that precisely because of those methods, they could approach the truth more quickly.

And her question was modest compared to such grand actions.

In a world so full of tragedy, how should people live?

A question no one could easily answer. I tried to raise my fallen body but was pushed back by the pain pounding through me.

Instead of desperately trying to stand, I rolled to the side.

Boom!

What ate into the ground where I had been was death itself.

It was a portion of the sea of death she was controlling and firing at me.

No matter how immune to death this body might be, continued exposure to that would kill my personality.

Even in the game, that spell combined mental damage with the eerie “spectral damage.”

I couldn’t just keep taking hits. If my mind died, it would be no different from my own death.

If I were a Black Knight, I could have just ignored it and charged forward. Suppressing a bitter smile, I tried to stand, but my knees gave way, making my body tremble.

I couldn’t change what wasn’t there, and I couldn’t alter what wasn’t possible.

As always, I did my best.

[Condolence]

Using my guilt as fuel, I charged forward.

Bang!

The floor flipped, propelling my body forward. I barely registered the speed. Due to my shattered knees and broken legs, I couldn’t achieve proper velocity.

Closing the distance, I swung my longsword, but death rose like a wall before her, blocking my blade.

There was a hissing sound. Even the Star Blade couldn’t cut through death and advance.

Before the flames extinguished, I pulled my body back as death lashed out like the leg of a giant cephalopod, beating against my armor.

My body involuntarily bent and curved, flying backward. Intense pain spread from my head throughout my body, momentarily threatening to roll my eyes back.

My body was numb. There was no time to break my fall. I couldn’t do it well anyway, but I didn’t even think about it. As soon as I rolled on the ground, I heard an eerie wailing sound.

The sound of death replacing the void. I rolled to the side again, but the giant tentacle leg persistently followed and kicked me again.

I hit the wall and rolled on the floor, mixed with skulls and tombstones, but I deliberately bit my tongue to force myself up.

I kept charging in only to be knocked back. Even when I barely blocked, I was sent flying, and without proper strength, I couldn’t dodge.

Breaking through death had weakened even the homunculus’s body.

But I didn’t retreat. There was no support. No one to help. I was the only one who could hold out here.

The fight continued until it seemed futile. At the moment I was pinned to the wall, successive attacks slowly pushed me into it.

I had lost consciousness, but a voice brought me back to my senses.

“How?”

It sounded accusatory, but that wasn’t her actual intent.

Belatedly, I curled my body as I fell to the floor.

My armor was barely clinging to my body in patches. It would regenerate given enough time, but that would clearly take a while.

Thanks to Condolence, it wasn’t too painful. Steadying my trembling arms, I used my sword as a cane to stand up. The black mage was extending her hand toward me with a blank expression.

“How could you jump in?”

Though the question wasn’t precise, I understood her meaning.

She had been greatly agitated from the moment I broke through death and came down.

It would be shocking to see me breaking through a pseudo-transcendent being that would normally kill upon contact.

From her perspective, my current appearance was that of someone willing to defy even death to accomplish something.

Despite the pain and the threat of death, I didn’t retreat, standing here intent on completing my task.

She was astonished.

She who had been manipulated by transcendent beings to create tragedy, who had joined the Research Faction and inflicted pain on people.

She regretted all those actions. Yet, as if pushed by inertia, she had created a pseudo-transcendent being despite her regrets.

As if that would give her answers.

Now, seeing me, she was perplexed, unable to understand.

Well, it made sense.

This wasn’t something I had to do.

I could have fled if I wanted to, and no one would have stopped me.

Yet I came down here. Breaking through death, coming down even as my body was reduced to tatters, I chose to confront her.

That was my choice.

So I exhaled, leaning on my sword.

All sorts of reasons came to mind.

I wasn’t used to seeing familiar faces die. To be honest, I disliked it.

I didn’t particularly like killing either. Even the faces of the cannibals I first killed with Condolence were stuck in my brain like stains.

That sensation, the terrible feeling of breath running through my hands.

Similarly, I knew it would feel bad if many people suddenly died.

So I moved.

Thinking I had a chance, not expecting to be beaten this badly.

No, is that really it?

I knew I couldn’t defeat a pseudo-transcendent being at level 2, but I charged forward anyway.

Because I didn’t want to run away from here.

No, because I didn’t want to run away anymore.

Everything was vague, but that much was certain.

That’s why I was here.

“Because I don’t want to regret.”

Rather, I would have regretted not doing this.

Because that’s what I wanted to do.

Because I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn’t.

Saying I would regret it because I would have regretted it sounds funny, but that’s how I felt.

I approached step by step, using my sword as a cane.

My body felt heavy. It felt like slowly suffocating under a sweat-soaked blanket.

My body was heavy. It felt like my body was heavier than my soul, crushing me.

But I desperately moved forward. Slowly, one step at a time.

Until I finally reached the mage.

The tip of my sword wavered, then sank in.

With the sensation of flesh tearing and the sound of a gasped breath,

I held the black mage’s shoulder and panted.

And I saw her memories flashing by like a montage.

All kinds of regrets passed by.

Her husband’s death, joining the Research Faction, dreaming the impossible through magic.

And even acting on it like this.

No, her entire life was regret. She reflected that there wasn’t a day she didn’t regret.

‘How can you do that?’

She asked. Now that I heard it, the meaning was slightly different.

So I answered.

“I lived each day with all my might, doing my best.”

“But regrets…”

“I’ll have regrets. But I’ll be better than who I was yesterday.”

That was enough.

That was more than enough to drive my life forward.

If I keep improving day by day, wouldn’t I eventually become perfect?

I sincerely believed that.

“How naive.”

The black mage read my thoughts and burst into laughter.

Then she slowly lowered her hand that had been gripping my wrist. Even so. Her whispered words, like magic, concluded.

“You are strong.”

Unlike me.

I pondered the words she didn’t say as I pulled out my sword.

Blood poured from her overripe heart, and the black mage buried her face in my chest and slowly closed her eyes.

In the place where magic had receded, only harsh reality remained.

But she had finally found her answer.