SSS-Class Revival Hunter

Chapter 74: The Death Gleaner (3)

“Master...” Preta cautiously looked up at me. “112 deaths are too much. You’ve already grown thin in just a few days. I almost didn’t recognize you—”

“Why? Have you become so loyal that you’re suddenly worried about my health?”

Preta hesitated, unsure if she should flatter me or be honest.

“...If you disappear, so will I,” she said, “Which means I won’t get to live in my little paradise. My life, my memories, and my values—everything will disappear. I am completely dependent on you, Master. Since I worry about myself, I’m also concerned about your health.”

“I like your honesty.” The corners of my mouth rose. “How is your life nowadays?”

“Pardon...?”

“You’re living in Estelle’s village, and the people you value more than your life have returned. How’s that going?”

After gaining the exclusive rights to the twentieth floor, I had set Preta loose in the village. I planned to let her stay in the village from now on, except for when I had a job for her like now.

“I’m... doing well,” she nervously answered.

“Is everything okay?”

“... Ah.” Preta blinked. “People calling themselves Hunters barged in one time. They said that the secret to how the Death King suddenly got strong must be here, and the Five Guilds must have hidden a treasure here... But the woman you brought—the Witch—and the Hunters under her command stopped them, so it didn’t turn into a big fight.”

The Black Dragon Guild’s service was as reliable as promised.

“None of the lords from the neighboring kingdoms come bother us anymore. They’re having a problem with the nomads that they brought in to attack us... Aside from them, both the empire and the temple declared my village a holy land. Lizardfolk and elves come and give us gifts from time to time.”

It seemed that things in the other world were going smoothly.

“Uhm... But...I lost my abilities,” Preta hesitantly continued.

I nodded.

“Sick people hear rumors about me so they come to the village...and, since the village has been declared a holy land, pilgrims come in hopes of miracles, so I’m not sure what to do with them... For now, the priest Hunters who follow the Inquisitor you also introduced are taking care of them...”

I nodded reassuringly. “Don’t worry. I have a plan.”

I was going to build the Chemist’s new shop on the twentieth floor. She said that she’d only accept the customers I introduced. Once this expedition was complete, the Chemist would be able to build a solid reputation of her own.

For that to happen, I needed to make sure to sort things out. Since patients would be coming constantly, she would be able to gain experience with various diseases. The Chemist wouldn’t be able to handle the workload alone, so she’d need employees. Making Preta her assistant would be a good idea. It’d also be good to take in Hunters who aspire to become Chemists as her students. The shop would grow naturally...

It wouldn’t take long for the new shop to be recognized as a branch of the Alchemist Office, and for the branch to then be upgraded to the headquarters.

I had to take care of my people.

I smiled. “What else?”

“There’s nothing else in particular... Ah, Dajenna. She’s one of the children from the village. She seems to like the tteokbokki the Hunters brought. And Garcorp—he’s an aged man who guards the orchard—he gave his fruits to the Hunters of the Black Dragon Guild that guard the village. The Hunters brought more fruits from your world in return...”

The wind kicked up small flurries of snow that danced through the soft beams of moonlight. Preta’s voice traveled like the snow. I listened to her story until the end.

Preta bowed. “... That’s how that is right now.”

“You’re saying it’s good.”

“Yes, it is,” she cautiously replied.

I nodded. “That is what the people of this world need, too. Go and collect the corpses.”

Preta bowed deeper, her golden hair rippling over her shoulders, and said, “Yes, Master.”

***

It was said that there was a right man for every job. Summoning Preta and leaving her in charge of collecting the corpses turned out to be a very good choice. After all, the fallen Constellation was once called the Demon King of Autumn Rain and had destroyed an entire world. She knew how to glean death.

“I’ll start by looking for villages or cities where government offices were located.” Preta signaled the army of skeletons to move out.

“Since they’re the workplace of government officials, there should be maps,” she added. “They’ll be crude, but they’ll be somewhat useful once I piece them together. I’ll use that to search remote farming and fishing villages.”

Three days after the search started, Preta and the skeletons delivered the zombies. They weren't martial artists—the zombies she delivered were just those who used to be ordinary farmers and commoners.

“This is a mother who hung her children and herself because she couldn’t stand watching her children starve.”

The group of white skeletons brought one corpse after another to the snowfield. It was hard to distinguish the white skeletons from the snow. From a distance, it seemed as if the corpses were walking toward me on their own.

“These children woke up one morning and saw their mother’s corpse. They cried by their mother’s side and withered to death like wildflowers.”

The line of corpses—of death—continued.

“These are villagers who cursed the dead mothers for failing to fulfill their duty as parents.”

“These people hid under the well to escape the plague but were never able to come out again.”

“They’re prisoners who starved to death in their cells without a chance to escape.”

Preta presented the poor with the care of a vassal presenting the finest tribute to her king. When a week had passed, she knelt before me again.

“I brought them all, Master.”

I looked at the snowfield.

The walking corpses struggled to break free from the skeletons’ grips. Some of the corpses were old and some of them were young. Hunger didn’t discriminate.

“...Good.” I took off my necktie, suit, and underwear, exposing my naked skin to the night sky. “Let them go.”

As soon as the skeletons released them, all 112 zombies swarmed me. They instinctively went for where the smell of flesh was the strongest—where I was standing.

I smiled. “Alright. Come at me!”

A young zombie dove in and bit a chunk out of my calf. The terrible pain made it feel like my nerves were on fire, but it was cut off at my thigh when an old zombie tore my leg off. The pain paused for a moment, but returned many times over.

I probably screamed, but I couldn't hear it because a zombie had torn off my ear. My lips were eaten, followed shortly by my tongue. I was unable to hear or speak, so I just had to watch countless shadows creeping over me.

[You have died.]

I looked up at the night sky. The moon was white as the unsullied snow.

[Recreating your killer’s trauma.]

It was just like the night sky when an old man looked up for the last time. He was a fisherman who had spent his whole life on the river.

When a jiangshi bit his finger, he didn't panic. He just calmly got on the boat and steered it away.

“If I die on this boat, I won’t cause problems for the rest of the world at least.”

As he lay down on the boat, gently rocked by the river, he could see his village. It was comfortable, as if he were lying down in a coffin. He was okay with the waves overturning the boat and killing him. Dying in his sleep wouldn’t be so bad either... The old man was happy to be born and die in the river.

The moon he looked up at for the last time was serene.

[Recreating your killer’s trauma.]

The young governor wondered how the world had come to this as he walked the castle walls at night. He wasn’t even an official before; he had been a scholar who had memorized a few lines and ran a very small school.

However, the original governor had died, along with his officials. Then their subordinates joined them. Death followed as if they were in search of each other. At the end of their search, they would find the young new governor.

“Sir,” a soldier said.

He was also originally not a soldier, but a tavern owner’s jobless husband. Although he tended to find fault in everything, he was smart, so he was useful.

“What is it?”

“The granary is empty. There won’t even be a scoop of millet after two weeks. The fishermen occasionally manage to catch fish, but it isn’t enough. What should we do...?”

“Start by reducing the elderly’s grain ration,” the young governor said. “There are countless jiangshi. We must value those who can still fight. Reduce the food given to the elderly and children to one-third of what they’re getting now.”

[Recreating your killer’s trauma.]

The governor was cold; at times, the governor seemed even colder than the jiangshi. Until he’d become governor, all he had done was recite the Confucian classics in the village. The soldier sometimes wondered where the governor got such determination.

“The opposition will be fierce—”

“Cut ​​the adults’ rations by half as well. Some people’s rations will be reduced more than the others, but if we reduce all of them, they’ll bear with it.”

“Won’t people still complain?”

“I’ll cut my rations first,” the governor curtly replied. “Actually, I’ll just not eat at all. I’m the leader, so if I don’t eat anything, those who complain won’t be able to last long.”

“... Are you okay?”

“This place won’t last long anyway. What difference will it make if I starve for a few days?”

The moon above the castle wall was serene.

[Recreating your killer’s trauma.]

“We’ll all starve to death at this rate!” a girl shouted.

She was a beggar who was part of the Beggar Gang, but the rich and the poor couldn’t be distinguished anymore. She was now just the leader of her peers.

The girl stomped her foot. “The governor told the children not to eat. He’s basically telling us to die!”

“Then what should we do, Sister... ... ?”

“Even if we’re going to die, we should die with something in our bellies. That’s how you become a good-looking jiangshi.” The girl huffed and puffed. “There’s a recipe I learned in the Beggar Gang called an earth cookie. It’s literally a cookie of mud.”

“Mud cookie...?”

“You can make as many cookies as you want as long as there’s mud.”

The boy’s eyes lit up.

“Listen up! Those of you who can swim, keep catching fish. Don’t give them to the adults anymore—we’ll share them among ourselves. And the rest of you’ll go to the river and scoop up soft mud.”

“What are you trying to do?”

“I’ll show you.” The girl grinned.

[Recreating your killer’s trauma.]

The children dug up mud from the riverside. Sand and grit was mixed into it, so the children had to sieve the mud multiple times to filter out the pebbles.

“Take a scoop of mud and make it into a ball, and lay it on a mat.” The young leader threw a ball of mud on the mat, then she spread it around like plaster. “Okay, that’s it!”

“...Is that it?”

“All we have to do now is let it dry in the sun. That’s how you make mud cookies.”

The children were dumbfounded.

“It’s just mud baked in the sun!”

“These aren’t cookies!”

“Be quiet. This is the ultimate recipe that has been passed down within the Beggar Gang. Just watch.”

The young leader took out a bag of salt. Salt had always been expensive, but now that rationing had been cut off, each grain was worth its weight in gold. She mixed the salt very carefully into the mud cookies lying on the mat.

After half a day, the mud cookies were completely dry.

“Okay! They’re done! Take one each! But be careful when you eat them. If you take a big bite, that won’t taste good! Eat them slowly!”

Half in doubt, the children bit into the mud cookies.

[Recreating your killer’s trauma.]

“...It’s actually not bad.” The boy nibbled on his mud cookie like a hamster.

[Recreating your killer’s trauma.]

Another boy’s eyes widened as he licked on his mud cookie like it was ice cream. It made the edge of his mud cookie wet.

“I like the saltiness.”

[Recreating your killer’s trauma.]

“It’s bad...” One girl made a long face.

The young leader giggled. “It’s okay as long as we can eat it. From now on, we have to get our own food. We’ll eat mud cookies on normal days, but we’ll also eat fish when we catch one. How does that sound?”

“Okay, Sister...”

The children curbed their hunger with mud.

To force the mud down their throats, the children had to trick their tongues with the saltiness. That was why the children licked at the mud cookies rather than biting right into them.

“Don’t lick it too much or it won’t taste like anything! You have to lick and chew that at the same time.”

The children kneaded the mud by the river every day.

“Huh? Look, there’s a corpse over there.”

They were on the same river that the old man had taken his last journey on. The old man had been born from the river and considered it a blessing that he died in the same river. He had thought that making his boat into his coffin would be a way to not cause trouble for the rest of the world.

Bodies of the drowned sometimes washed up to the riverbank. Dying on the river was the old man’s final joy, but the old man was unfortunate enough to not wash up on the other side of the river. Actually, everyone was unfortunate in this case.

“It looks like an old man drowned.”

“I feel bad...”

“Do you think he used to be a fisherman?”

The children approached the old man’s body with both fear and curiosity. It was dawn, so it was still dark.

“Huh?”

“W-wait a minute!”

“Why?”

“That isn’t a corpse It’s a jiangshi!”

The corpse began to stir after it caught wind of the children’s scent.

“Run away!”

Some of the children did.

“Ah...”

But there were some who couldn’t.

[Recreating your killer’s trauma.]

That was it.

[Recreating your killer’s trauma.]

That was how the riverside fortress fell, cut off from the imperial capital and the surrounding villages. The old man died. The last governor died fighting. The soldier tried to escape through the gates, but he died. The young leader protected her younger sibling until she died.

[Recreating your killer’s trauma.]

They tried to live.

[Recreating your killer’s trauma.]

They struggled hard.

[Recreating your killer’s trauma.]

Because they wanted to live, they endured their hunger.

[Recreating your killer’s trauma.]

The children had searched for wet ground and scooped out mud. They had spread mud dough across the mat. When the mud cookies had dried up, the children clutched them...

[Recreating your killer’s trauma.]

...Every single movement of all 112 of the dead was driven by hunger.

[The trauma recreation has been completed.]

[It has been confirmed that the ego of the subject of the Skill penalty is intact.]

[Ending the Skill penalty.]

I slowly opened my eyes.

“I was just trying to learn how to boil tree bark...” I whispered.

The reality was like nothing I could have imagined. The collapsing world didn’t even count the farmer’s tree bark as a trauma. When humans were cornered, they could even eat mud.

“Yeah, I guess it’s possible.”

I stood up and dug through the snow, wrapping my hand in my aura. After scooping up handful after handful of the seemingly endless snow, I reached the frozen ground. It was the first time I had seen it since I had come to this world.

“Let’s see...”

The ground had been frozen for years, so it wasn’t easy to dig, which forced me to use my aura to scrape together a handful of soil and snow and boil it like soup. After a while, the soil grew mushy.

It was literally just muddy water. I did as I had seen in my dream: I picked out grains of sand and pebbles one by one, and then kneaded the mud into a circle. I took off my coat and suit and used them as mats to lay the kneaded mud on.

Time passed. Morning arrived, followed by noon. I baked the mud cookies under the sunlight. After that, I carefully picked up the mud cookies and cradled them in my hands. They looked just like dalgona.[1]

“... Thank you for this meal.”

I nibbled on it. It crunched softly between my teeth. I licked the edge of the mud cookie. It became a little softer, but only at the tip of my tongue. When I held a piece of the mud cookie in my mouth, the soil grains stuck to the roof of my mouth.

After a while, I got the hang of eating it. This cookie wasn’t something I chewed using my molars; I had to gnaw on it with my front teeth and then swallow it in little tiny pieces. I slowly ate the cookie, mulling over the simple taste of the sun’s warmth and the soil’s smell.

“... It doesn’t taste good.”

I bit it.

“It’s bad.”

I slowly chewed.

“It’s really bad.”

I swallowed. My shoulders shook. So did my heart. An indescribable emotion rushed over me. Was it anger? Was it sadness? Maybe that was loathing. Humans came from the earth, so why couldn’t they feed on it? Why were the smell and texture of the earth so miserable? Why?

I didn’t even realize my right hand was tightly clenched. It could be anger, sadness, or loathing.

At that moment, I realized that I was supposed to grab the emotions that couldn’t be expressed in words. Those emotions were meant to be wielded—yes, martial arts were about wielding a handful of emotion in one’s hand.

It’s time to go back.

I drew my holy sword and aimed it at my neck. I had to go back and show the Heavenly Demon my sword. No, not mine—it belonged to the old man, the soldier, the governor, and the children who died nameless.

I’d never read a murim novel, so I didn’t know the exquisite principle of yin and yang. If my martial arts had any such thing, it was just the movements of those abandoned by the heavens. Their resentment and grudges brought demons into this world.[2] Left with nothing but their resentment and grudges, they looked up to the sky—hence, the Demonic Heaven.

I stabbed right through my neck. I returned with the deaths of 112 people in my heart. What I had to do wasn’t any different from the last time—I asked the Heavenly Demon to accept me as her disciple. Just like the last time, the Heavenly Demon spent a night pondering. After that, the Heavenly Demon gave me a trial.

“What is the trial?”

The Heavenly Demon pointed into the pit. “I’ve thrown a jiangshi soldier down there. He used to be a promising member of my cult and a Peak-Tier master. Quite renowned in gangho. Defeat that jiangshi; then I’ll accept you as my disciple. But feel hunger while you fight. You should only feel hunger and the pain of hunger while you fight that jiangshi. No other emotions or thoughts can clutter your mind. Can you do it? ”

I didn’t answer her. It wasn’t something that could be expressed in words, so there was no need to try and come up with an answer. Instead, I jumped into the pit.

The jiangshi rushed at me. I looked at it indifferently.

In my heart only the smell of mud in my mouth, the feeling of a lump of dirt in my hand, and the children’s hunger resided.

Demonic Heaven Arts,

First Form:

Starvation Death.

I swung my sword once, cutting through the jiangshi’s legs. In my second slash, I chopped off its arms. With my third, it lost its head. Every attack hungered.

The one who used to be the Heavenly Demon Cult’s Peak Tier master was now silent at the bottom of the pit.

I looked up and saw the Heavenly Demon’s mouth agape. It was like the first time she had seen the Hunters and I. Perhaps she was even more shocked than that time.

When her lip ceased trembling, her heart would roar to life. She thought that life had lost almost all meaning to her, but a new beginning was blooming right before her eyes.

I slowly opened my mouth.

“Lady Heavenly Demon, what kind of death shall I demonstrate next?”

1. Korean candy made from melted sugar and baking soda. Image. ☜

2. The inner demons in Buddhism that hinder people during their cultivation. The most popular example is the heart demon. Some texts say that there are demons who are born from people’s resentment and grudges. ☜