Ch.42The Mourner on the Snowy Field (4)

In the silence, time flows.

The corpses, entrails, and blood on the floor were something that could no longer move, and the Mourner and I stood motionless, staring at each other.

It wasn’t because of the corpses. Nor was it the stiffness that came from facing the middle-aged Mourner who had created this death.

Let’s say… I was giving the person before me time to gather their thoughts.

I silently gazed at the death and corpses I had already grown accustomed to.

When I first came to this world of Grim Darker, I never thought I’d get used to corpses, but I was surprised at how much more indifferent I had become than expected.

Perhaps because it wasn’t death created by my hands, or because I had done my best.

I couldn’t quite grasp my own feelings. Then again, I was never good at self-reflection.

If I were, I wouldn’t have been chat-banned so many times. I made eye contact with the Mourner whose hands were soaked in blood.

His black pupils revealed sympathy, sadness, frustration, and even a hint of irritation.

Evidence that this sort of thing happened frequently.

“It’s quiet,” the middle-aged man suddenly said to me. Perhaps thinking I was a Contractor of the Star, he didn’t try to close the distance hastily.

Well, it would make sense for him to have some negative preconceptions about Star Contractors.

After all, there was Blazing Lord, a companion of the Guardian Knight, the protagonist and Star Contractor who ranked even above the Star Blade.

So I opened my mouth to deny his assumption.

“I’m not a Star Contractor.”

“…What?”

“That’s not to say this isn’t the power of the Star. You could say it’s a power that resides only in this object.”

The longsword I drew from my waist ignites with flame. Though I moved the crimson-stained blade lightly, it burned through the darkness.

As dawn broke, he silently stared at the longsword.

Would he charge at me?

I prepared to use Mourning at any moment while maintaining eye contact with him.

“Black Knight—”

“Mourner.”

The middle-aged man flinched and froze at the truth I revealed. Confusion and bewilderment flashed across his eyes.

Soon that confusion hardened into some kind of certainty. He scanned the surroundings with a hollow laugh.

“So that’s why you noticed.”

“That’s right.”

At my confirmation, he looked around.

His wandering gaze, perhaps searching for a place to sit, eventually gave up and closed. He slumped down where he stood.

He showed no concern for the blood staining the floor.

His right leg seemed uncomfortable, limping throughout the process. I could easily tell what had happened to him.

A middle-aged Mourner. Though an impossible combination normally, he must have experienced much in his life to reach that age as a Mourner.

The man had arrived here after countless battles, and those fights had steadily eaten away at his body.

This was the result. I looked at the fallen noble on the floor, who could well be called a commoner now.

‘Krom Ne, it’s Krom, my lord.’

The man who identified himself as Krom had been a noble. Or more precisely, a former noble.

That much was clear from how he started to state his family name out of habit but stopped.

In this world of Grim Darker, family names were something commoners typically didn’t possess, so I could be certain he was a noble just from that.

Of course, that wasn’t the only indication.

He was an ordinary, untrained human, but he was the leader, and had the fairest skin among them.

Though it’s said that people in similar situations are alike, he wasn’t a shapeshifter like Isla or from the Northern regions.

So he was a noble.

Clearly, his title had been stripped for some reason, which led him to this new continent.

I realized that the Mourner before me was involved in all of those circumstances.

Indeed, the middle-aged Mourner lowered his head with a bitter expression and murmured.

“It was a coincidence. The village was burning.”

A story that began without preamble. I stood still, watching him.

His eyes were already wandering through the past.

“People were dying, being violated. I couldn’t just ignore it. My own land had burned and disappeared too.”

Though the Empire’s civil war had ended, that didn’t mean there were no wars on the old continent.

The Tribal Federation was still a loose alliance, with tribes constantly warring against each other, and it was always the common people who died in these large and small conflicts.

This Mourner’s origin was obvious. He too was from the North. His cold complexion and the subtle hint of Orc lineage were evident.

He laughed, unable to cry.

“I just rushed in and killed. All I could do was kill and mourn.”

“I see.”

“Yes, he was a noble. After I killed him, I realized he was a noble.”

A hollow laugh.

A middle-aged man who hadn’t been educated, who had simply acquired the power of Mourning and survived longer than expected.

He couldn’t have had the notion that he should distinguish nobles and avoid killing them.

This was karma coming full circle. He was looking at the son of the man he had killed with bitter eyes.

Why hadn’t he been killed in return?

Why hadn’t he tried to die?

I already knew the answer.

The story that followed confirmed it.

“I didn’t want to kill. So I ran and hid. For a long time.”

He pressed his hand against the blood-soaked floor.

“But the pursuit never stopped, so I crossed over to the new continent. I thought they wouldn’t follow me to such a cursed land. Even if they did, I thought I would die first.”

But it didn’t turn out that way. He had been carefully avoiding people.

He even avoided Isla, who appeared to be just a hunter.

The reason was obvious. His hands were drenched in blood.

“I… in my body… there’s something I don’t understand. If someone tries to harm me, if someone threatens me, something boils in my blood.”

The weakness of a Mourner is their low sustainability. They can’t use Mourning continuously.

The debuffs that stack with each use were a significant limitation, making Mourners similar to F1 machines that run out of fuel after 60 seconds of normal use.

They say you just need to end all battles within 60 seconds, but that’s not easy.

There was a skill that mitigated this weakness.

A skill that automatically uses Mourning without risk when attacked or afflicted with status ailments.

It’s a skill acquired at Mourner level 7 and the reason why Mourner is a recommended job for beginners.

“Even if I try not to resist, even if I want to die and let go of everything… my body moves on its own.”

What follows is predictable. I rolled my eyes to witness the carnage.

The battle scars were vivid. So were the wounds.

Biting, kicking, crushing, tearing apart with bare hands.

An impact force that a human body couldn’t produce and the cruelty that emerges after losing one’s reason had killed them all.

“It was always like this when I came to my senses. Always.”

He was a warrior who had acquired a robust physique, strength, luck, and experience.

At the same time, he was a Mourner. All these elements synergized to keep him alive.

They kept him alive as a Mourner until middle age.

Even if he wished to die.

I watched as the middle-aged man covered his face with his blood-stained hands. No tears came, nor did he even wail.

The man had lived too long for that.

“This is a curse.”

He described the power of a Mourner as a curse.

It made sense. Even I, who had only skimmed the story, knew that much.

Mourners are cursed ones. At least, that’s what they’re called in the world.

They become powerful through incomprehensible strength and destroy their enemies with power beyond human limits.

Considering where Mourners typically appear, their enemies were always close to the established order.

The powerful, the rulers, the immovable stones.

Would they ever look kindly upon Mourners?

Even if things went well, wouldn’t it end up like this?

That’s why the world viewed it this way:

That this wasn’t a power that mere humans could obtain by mourning other humans.

That was why they died young. Due to the overwhelming power that ate away at their bodies and their inability to choose their enemies.

An issue I had simply passed over while playing the game now weighed heavily on my mind.

I was a monster and a Mourner. A realist who couldn’t live freely by dismissing this world as just a game.

Could someone like me ignore the principles of a Mourner?

Could I remain ignorant of where my power comes from and why?

I didn’t think so.

It’s uncertain if I can return to where I came from. I don’t even know the method.

Unless there’s a convenient message in the status window saying I’ll be sent back after seeing the game’s ending.

Otherwise, I had to live in this terrible dark fantasy world of Grim Darker as if it were my own.

I need to live with careful consideration of this monstrous body and the unidentified power that comes with being a Mourner.

Clearly, Homunculus was the wrong race to choose, and I became a monster regardless of my will.

But that fact didn’t make me any less of a monster.

So I took a step forward.

The middle-aged man, who had been crouching in agony, raised his head. He flinched.

What crossed his expression was fear. It was close to the fear of possibly killing and harming me.

Battle excitement is for novices.

This limping man, who had fought for a long time until he was worn out, could no longer find joy in fighting.

Especially if his first kill was an act of mourning. It would have been a sad revenge.

The man who had spent a long time taking revenge and mourning no longer wanted to harm anyone. He backed away from my approach.

“Don’t. You’ll die. I don’t want to kill anyone anymore.”

Words that conveyed raw emotion. Honest without any pretense.

That was definitely sincere. If we were to fight, there’s a good chance I might lose.

“You said you wanted to die.”

“…Not enough to risk someone else dying.”

This time it’s a lie. He wanted to die even if it meant that. Only the morality within him advised against it.

“One thing’s for certain. I can’t kill you. At least not now.”

He doesn’t question it. He knows it well. So I looked the middle-aged man in the eye and spoke solemnly.

“But I can find you a place to die. Someday, when I’m strong enough, I might kill you myself.”

This is a whim. There’s no real need for this, but I wanted to do it.

It’s always been like that. I’m the kind of person who needs to do what I want to feel satisfied.

“What do you mean…?”

“I am a Homunculus.”

The middle-aged man flinched and froze.

“I am a monster. And also a Mourner.”

As I told him, I was undoubtedly a monster.

I belong to the same race as the assassin who killed the five Grand Dukes, a powerful monster that often appears in conspiracies aiming to engulf the Empire or in civil wars.

At the same time, I was of the same race as the Guardian Knight who stopped all of that, though it wasn’t widely known.

“Someday, I will become the strongest Mourner.”

I could be confident in that much.

My build was that powerful.

It was even the recommended build for beginners for a long time.

Simple yet strong, it was considered the only way to enable easy mode in a game without difficulty settings.

That’s why I can offer mercy to this middle-aged man.

“Someday, when I become capable of killing you… if you still wish to die then.”

Our eyes met, and I saw someone in his black pupils.

A monster full of confidence.

“I will kill you.”

There were words I deliberately left unsaid. A meaning I only implied.

The middle-aged Mourner wasn’t naive enough to miss it.

With the wisdom his years had granted him.

He bowed his head deeply with an indescribable, mysterious smile.

“Thank you.”

For the permission to live until then, to continue living if he felt like it by that time.

The middle-aged man wept silently on the bloodstained floor.