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5.
I had become an object of envy.
“…”
No, this wasn’t a feeling that could simply be described as ‘envy’.
Jealousy. That’s right. Only jealousy could be used to describe the boiling loneliness.
‘Although it’s not the first time.’
Right, it wasn’t the first time.
Hunters I didn’t know. Those who lived every day on the 1st Floor, waiting for their skills to awaken without being able to go further.
The [Death King Kim Gong-ja] was already an object of jealousy for countless people.
‘I knew that.’
All of that tsunami-like attention, the voices praising me or asking for an autograph, the whispers and pointing as I walked back and forth on the street, I enjoyed it quite a bit.
‘However…’
Right, however.
‘Even you.’
I slowly stared at the Venomous Snake.
‘Even someone like you, is jealous of me.’
Someone like the Venomous Snake.
The sight of them chatting carelessly and joking around as they did now was so [impossible] that it would have freaked me out if I had seen it in the past.
‘My heart’s idols.’
To me, who was a fan of the top Hunters, they were like idols.
Even though the leader of the idol group, Flame Emperor Yoo Soo-ha had retired due to an unfortunate accident and was preparing to become a trainee again, the Venomous Snake was still one of my heart’s idols.
And yet, such a person was releasing a boiling aura all over the place and screaming that he was jealous of me.
“Ah,”
I was confronted with that heart right in front of my eyes.
“Ahahaha, ahahaha!”
I couldn’t help it, I started to laugh loudly.
“Ahahahahaha, ah, ahahahahahahaha!”
A moonlit plain.
The vegetation was lost beneath the sandy desert, and fine grains of sand fluttered to and fro in the wind. The hills and valleys of the sandy desert were covered in tens of millions of rose petals.
Then, it rained.
The rain of fall.
Red rain poured in every direction. It was a shower. The sandy desert was covered by water, and the lines of the valleys shined. The rose petals that swallowed the raindrops became fresher.
And so, the world, the sandy desert, was revived by the sound of rain falling and the sound of water flowing, and the golden petals embroidered the surface of the water, creating the illusion that something sacred was asleep there.
An oasis erected in the middle of the desert.
It was only when our surroundings had become an oasis that I stopped laughing.
“Ahahaha… hah, ha… ahahaha.”
The Venomous Snake glared at me.
“You’re laughing?”
I nodded with my rain soaked face.
“Yes. I feel like I just laughed all my laughs for this year.”
“You bastard!”
Chyaaang!
The Venomous Snake tried to rip out my throat with his specialty lightning like speed.
However, it didn’t work. The grains of sand he stepped on to get into his stance were Kim Yul’s, the petals he passed while moving through the air were Sylvia’s.
And, above all, the rainwater he was already drenched in was Estelle’s.
“I’m sorry, Chun Mu-mun Master.”
I countered the Venomous Snake’s attack as if I could predict where and how he would attack.
“Was I able to serve Master because I am strong? Were my children raised to be strong because I am strong? That’s all true. It’s true, but… I think the Chun Mu-mun Master is mistaken about something.”
“Mistaken…?”
“I wasn’t strong from the start.”
I picked up a short spear* from the ground. Then, I condensed and compressed my aura onto the very tip, and threw the now red short spear.(*:aka javelin/throwing spear.)
Towards the Venomous Snake.
“Kuk…!”
The Venomous Snake rolled to avoid my attack. Pashashasha! The sharp short spear tore petals apart and dug deeply into the desert sand.
Tuk, tuk, raindrops fell on the handle of the short spear.
Bleeding, the Venomous Snake got to his feet. As if he was unable to completely dodge the short spear I threw, the Venomous Snake’s body was already a mess.
“Fu-, ck…! What the hell are you talking about!”
“Just that, I wasn’t strong from the start.”
I created three aura spears. I gathered together a few petals, a few grains of sand, and a few drops of water, then, in an instant, they took the forms of three crimson spears. The three spears hovered in the air, awaiting my orders.
“This is a feat that I wasn’t able to perform instantly.”
I beckoned slightly, and hurled the spears at the Venomous Snake.
“Kuuuuk!?”
Blood splattered.
“Really, it’s surprisingly really recent. If I didn’t have the support of Estelle, Sylvia, Kim Yul, and my vassals, I would not be able to waste my aura like this.”
The Venomous Snake had managed to dodge two of the three attacks. However, that was my goal.
The last aura spear hit the Venomous Snake’s shoulder and pierced his flesh. He collapsed, screaming.
“I didn’t defeat the Devil King of Fall Rain because I was strong from the start. I definitely wasn’t able to reassure and comfort Master because I was strong from the start.”
When I heard the Venomous Snake’s words, I recalled the first time I met Master.
That’s why I laughed.
At that time, as I wished, I was accepted as a disciple of my maiden home by Master.
Master said [Let’s see if you are qualified to become a direct disciple] and took me somewhere, but the somewhere was a pit filled with martial arts zombies.
The so-called hunger training of the Infernal Heavens Demonic Art. It was a training course to realize the Sword of Starvation.
-Why are you hesitating? Hurry up, and don’t fall into hell.
That was what Master said to me as I screamed and hit the martial arts zombies.
-Remember the longest time you were starved for.
-The longest time I starved for was 3 to 4 days…….
-What? Three to four days?
Upon hearing my answer, Master was dumbfounded.
-Oho. Huh. Tsk, tsk, tsk. I see that this isn’t getting through to you.
-Enough. This was my fault! For a moment, I had hope. As I thought, you are a man who’s only talk.
Then Master… abandoned me.
She left me, who was struggling madly and desperately in the pit, in the blink of an eye, without giving me a single glance.
-Heavenly Demon-nim! Heavenly Demon-nim?! Please wait! Oh my God, it’s not like being hungry is something special! Does that make any sense that you can’t learn martial arts because of that?! Huh?! Oh fu—…
Before I could go from fu to ck, I was eaten by the martial arts zombies.
“Ahahaha…”
I couldn’t help but laugh as I recalled those memories.
My Master, a cold and aloof person.
It was difficult to give her a single flower.
And now, there was someone who was jealous that I made her smile, envious, and struggling to surpass me, so what should I do?
My lifetime Master must have received a lot of jealousy and envy while she was alive, so what did she do at that time? It was a bit unfortunate that I couldn’t ask Master what I wanted to right now, or hear her voice.
“Chun Mu-mun Master…everything I did wasn’t because I was strong from the start.”
“…”
“It’s just that I received a bit more time than everyone else.”
The Venomous Snake breathed heavily as he looked up at me.
Naturally, he didn’t understand what I was saying.
‘Unlike me.’
Ahh, I could understand the Venomous Snake’s heart.
I understood it completely without a single falsehood or misunderstanding.
It wasn’t just because I was once in a position of envy.
‘Because I heard it.’
Just a moment ago, when the Venomous Snake was screaming and swinging his sword at me.
The images of the Venomous Snake from the days before I met him and the Heretic Questioner from the before he met me were reflected in my mind for a moment, like a mirage.
Not just their images, but also their voices.
-I know you’re trying to ‘fix’ me.
-Why?
-Because you cannot take responsibility for me.
I looked at the Venomous Snake.
The Venomous Snake was still looking at me. Beneath his dark gaze, his thick lips were tightly shut.
However.
-To say it plainly, the two of us are friends and colleagues.
-Isn’t that enough?
Even at that moment, I could hear the voices gathered together in the Venomous Snake’s heart.
It wasn’t that I had awakened a new skill. My skill list was still filled with footprints that substantiate my life. It also wasn’t that I had gained sudden enlightenment and could now read people’s minds, it, it was just…
‘Traces of the Tower Master.’
It was an aftereffect of being killed by the Tower Master and witnessing her trauma.
Ja Soo-jung, the Master of the Tower who embraces the unhappiness and misfortune of all life(Manseng). The god who witnesses and recalls every moment of their unhappiness. Tens of millions, hundreds of millions, no, a countless number of human [trauma] were transplanted onto the Tower Master.
As much as they suffer, the Tower Master suffers.
When they scream, the Tower Master also screams.
And so, everyone’s trauma is the Tower Master’s trauma.
‘That moment when I saw the Tower Master’s trauma… did I see the trauma of every being living in the Tower at the same time?’
A tremendous amount of memory that was difficult for a human to withstand.
Therefore, we generally lived lives of not remembering, having poor recollection, or forgetting entirely.
‘However, like this time where the Venomous Snake was shouting about past resentment…’
I was [beginning to hear] too.
‘Like looking at the trauma of those who killed me.’
The scenes the Tower Master witnessed, the wounds she transplanted to her heart.
I wasn’t sure if it really happened in the [past] of this world, in a world created separately by Ja Soo-jung’s interference, or somewhere in the [future].
Half Divine Eye.
I opened my eyes to that.
“…ha.”
I let out a laugh once again.
This was the world that the Tower Master saw.
It was saddening just to think that in your daily life, just by bumping into someone by chance, you would hear their cries and screams.
“What I was laughing at a while ago!”
Shaking my head, I brushed my thoughts aside.
Then, I looked at the human in front of me.
“Chun Mu-mun Master… do you want to defeat me?”
The sudden question made the Venomous Snake pause.
Not paying attention to that, I continued to ask.
“As fair as possible. Chun Mu-mun Master, you don’t want anything other than to beat me in one-on-one, right?”
The Venomous Snake grit his teeth.
“If that’s the case,”
Blood gushed from the Venomous Snake’s mouth.
“If that’s the case, then what would you do…!”
That spat blood, I didn’t avoid it.
The Venomous Snake had collapsed, and I was looking down at him, so a few drops of blood from the Venomous Snake’s mouth splashed onto my cheek.
“Give you a chance.”
Just like I didn’t wipe away the pouring rain, I also didn’t wipe away the blood.
“I’ll say it again, I wasn’t strong from the start. Time. It took a lot of time. During that time, I gathered all the children I got along with and created a family.”
I grabbed the aura spear stuck in his shoulder and pulled it out. Cough! Once more, the Venomous Snake’s body heaved and blood gushed out.
“And there are a lot of ways for the Chun Mu-mun Master to buy time.”
I slowly opened my mouth.
“200 years, 6 months, and 21 days.”
“…?”
“That is the amount of time the Heretic Questioner spent on the 31st Floor on his own.”
Silence.
Perhaps for a moment, the Venomous Snake didn’t understand the meaning of my words. But his eyes slowly widened. Tuk. Raindrops falling from the sky flowed through my hair before landing on the body of the Venomous Snake. It wasn’t until a few raindrops had fallen did the Venomous Snake open his mouth.
“You don’t mean… therefore….”
“Yes.”
I nodded.
“Whether it takes 200 years or 300 years, try to stay alone in this place like the Heretic Questioner. Train and practice for hundreds of years. Try to attract people.”
“…”
“Then challenge me again. Chun Mu-mun Master.”
Hundreds of years.
Closed door training where you were trapped in time, not space.
That was what I told the Venomous Snake.