Chapter 304: The Gray Spider (3)

The Spiders froze when they saw my smile. I had met many people who lived long lives. In the Tower, it was possible to overcome a human’s natural lifespan. Some people lived for over a hundred years, and even Constellations like Hamustra had been wandering for tens of thousands of years. Meeting them made me realize one thing—fear was a part of life.

“It’ll never end like this,” I announced with a bright smile. “If you won’t make a move, then I will.”

My feet were faster than my words as I ran. In the next moment, a Spider hiding in the building debris let out a short, sharp cry. The freckled witch and I locked eyes, standing just inches apart. With a reassuring smile, I pressed on her pressure point.

“

Ah...

”

“No matter how eternal it feels, a thousand years isn’t eternity,” I hummed. My words carried no meaning. “Just like it takes ten days for the red flowers to wither, the arrival of the Magic Tower’s autumn needed a thousand years.”

All the Spiders scattered throughout the city were listening to every word that was coming out of my mouth. They would desperately try to find meaning in my words, and that was enough for me. If I could confuse them even a little, I would gladly pretend to recite riddles leisurely.

“

Ah

, I should have worn a black robe. This is the historic moment when the Great Demonic Path destroys the Magic Tower’s thousand-year history. Yet I failed to consider my attire at the moment. Well, it’s just a minor detail. My teacher will surely laugh it off.”

“Retreat!” one of the colonel Spiders screamed. “Retreat! Retreat! Thirty-Third Battalion, hold that monster back, even if it’s just for a moment!”

“Retreat? Where the hell are we supposed to go?”

“Assemble at headquarters! This fight is hopeless! We need the elder’s intervention.”

Objectively speaking, the Magic Tower still held the upper hand. The enemies I had defeated so far numbered just over a hundred. However, I had been targeting and eliminating only the commanding officers.

The enemy’s commanding system collapsed. The Spiders, who relied entirely on Aura Transmission for communication, lost their means of fighting me when their wide-area communication network, the Spider Web, was torn apart. Every witch was on their own.

[The Constellations’ quests are in progress.]

[The Eternal Plains Warhorse has ordered his followers to march!]

[The Labyrinth-Dwelling Eye has revealed the enemies’ retreat routes.]

[The Tear-Bringing Bell of the Dead has posted the identities of those who lost their lives in the past rebellions across the city.]

[The Incarnation of Love and Lust has exposed the identities of Spiders of the viscount rank or higher.]

As soon as the Constellations judged that the Grand Campaign was making progress, they immediately granted their followers appropriate rewards and motivation. The Constellation couldn’t encourage their followers up until now because they had no intention of resisting the Tower.

In the end, it wasn’t the Constellations in the night sky that cleared the quests, but the humans on the ground. The Constellations could only respond when their followers moved forward. Thus, a counterattack began throughout the city.

“Hahahaha! This is awesome! I apologize for treating you like a child, Death King! I don’t even remember how long it has been since I used Aura Transmission to my heart’s content! Great, great, great!”

“This is excellent! I am the apostle that serves the Whip of the Self-Tormentors, the Constellation you Spider bastards buried in your fourth headquarters! My title is Berserker!” the Hunter who had been plotting the uprising with me in the underground cave roared.

“Give me back my Constellation, you shits!”

“Sword Emperor, Sword Emperor... Wow, I heard that name a lot, but I never expected to come this far... I was honestly skeptical, but... yeah. This may be our last chance. Everyone, as the apostle of the Incarnation of Love and Lust, I command you. Even if fighting isn’t your specialty, please rise and fight back even if it means you’re going to die here.”

“Impressive.”

The tables were turned. The Spider Web, the barrier that had enveloped the Monopoly City, was dismantled entirely. The voices that had been suppressed until now, the agents of countless Constellations, took control of the city. From the north, west, south, and east, from the open-air tavern and other taverns lined up along the streets, blue, red, yellow, and white aura rippled out like waves, overlapping with one another and shaking the city sky.

“I guess today is the last day we hide underground and whisper in each other’s ears.”

Swish!

Something resembling fireworks shot into the sky. It was a single strike that contained compressed aura. The strike wasn’t an assassination attempt targeting commanding officers like me. In fact, it wasn’t aimed at anyone in the first place.

The fireworks were aimed at the sky, splitting the dark clouds in two. The strike was so weak that it was embarrassing compared to what the Constellation Murderer could do.

However, the value of a sword wasn’t determined by how tightly the hilt was held, but by its target. In that sense, the fireworks that the apostle of the Eternal Plains Warhorses shot were undoubtedly precious. Light shone through the split clouds’ gaps.

Shouts erupted throughout the city.

“Let’s go, Horsemen. Follow the Death King, the Sword Emperor’s heir.”

“You vermin!”

a Spider raged at the apostle.

“We retreated because of him, not because we were afraid of you! Who do you think you are, talking to us like that? You motherfuckers. Have we gone too easy on—”

Ah, there she is.

I swung my sword and threw an aura strike.

“What?”

the Spider yelped. Along with the sound of buildings collapsing, I heard the Spider jumping up and down in fury. She yelled,

“Hey, you brat! Where are your manners? Why would you hit me while I was talking? What? You just wiped out my entire squad with that? I can’t believe it. Damn it, are you really the Sword Emperor’s heir? Why the heck won’t you stop smiling? You look so full of yourself, just like the Sword Emperor. Fuck!”

I launched another aura strike.

“Fucking hell!”

With that final curse, her voice was cut off. The colonel, who had let her guard down because she thought she couldn’t be hit just by using Aura Transmission, had already disappeared. The brave warrior had known that she was going to get struck down, but couldn’t go down before saying something about it. Well, now she was gone.

There was only one person left.

“Yeah, I’m used to it.”

The only one left was strong enough to let her guard down, held onto the rank that she couldn’t easily let go of, and had the madness not to forget cursing others until the very end.

“This fuckery is familiar. You look different, but this fuckery reminds me of that bastard. Honestly, I’m surprised. Even though you take a completely different approach, you’re so full of yourself, just like him.”

Without hesitation, I fired another aura strike in the direction where the voice came from.

Booom!

For the first time today, my attack was nullified in midair. From far away, where the apostle’s fireworks split the clouds, her fingers stretched out in a ray of sunlight.

“I have a question. Where did you learn this kind of fuckery?”

A woman with an expressionless face, which was still mostly hidden in the shadows, looked down at the ground. The brim of her hat was long and wide, leaving no gaps for the sunlight to penetrate.

“If there’s a specialized hospital that gets rid of people’s bullshit, tell me. In my opinion, that’s the root of all evil. No matter how many times I step on you people, cockroaches keep crawling out. There must be an academy somewhere that breeds you all.”

The elder, the supreme witch, the liberator of Niglus—Kukulu’ the one who annihilated the five species, the master of the abandoned gray, the godslayer, the witch who drove stakes into the six Constellations, the greatest Spider, the master of all Spiders was a Hunter with so many titles and nicknames that counting them was meaningless. Alongside the already deceased Sword Emperor and the basically deceased Constellation Murderer, she was a human being that even the Constellations admired.

I smiled. It didn’t matter how many names she had. From the moment I first met her, when I had heard about the past from the Guardian, I had already decided what to call her.

“Nice to meet you, Lady Gray Spider. I am the Death King.”

A short sneer escaped her mouth.

“Death King? That makes you the ruler of the underworld, I guess. Then you should just fall into hell and play king there, kid. Why did you bother crawling out of those depths and causing trouble here?”

“

Ah

, it turns out this place is also hell, so I didn’t need to go all the way to the underworld.”

“You don’t know how to shut your mouth, do you?”

“I have a lot of uses for my mouth. I still gotta eat and all, so I can’t exactly keep my mouth shut all the time.”

The elder seemed to be momentarily speechless.

I shook my holy sword and smiled. “I’m just messing with you. To lighten the mood, you know?”

The elder opened and closed her mouth a couple of times before she glared at me with contempt. She then suddenly seemed to realize something. That was quite a variety of expressions. Grabbing her staff with one hand, she pressed her forehead with the other and murmured,

“You’re a real wacko. Fuck.”

My biggest question and mystery was that everyone I met seemed to think that “wacko” was the most appropriate word to describe me. It was as if it were the only word in the entire universe. It was a mysterious mystery. Mr. Lee was everyone’s captain and friend[1].

“Please understand. I’m the Sword Emperor’s heir, aren’t I? I’m just trying to follow his example, so I seem like a wacko because I’m method acting. I’m not usually this bad.”

“You’re not that bastard’s heir.”

Huh?

“I saw your sword arts. You’re skilled at using aura, but you’re different from the Sword Emperor. I can sense malice in you. Yes, you have malice in your heart.”

The elder looked around the room.

Aha.

The Constellations were encouraging their followers with their quests. However, those quests were based on the premise that I was the Sword Emperor’s heir. If it turned out that I had no connection to the Sword Emperor, then the Incarnation of Love and Lust’s quest would have to be suspended immediately. That was why the elder made sure to speak in a way that everyone could hear. That was a critical hit.

She’s smart.

The elder clicked her tongue.

“You swordsmen call yourselves the followers of the Righteous Path or the Demonic Path, yes? Even though I have no interest in the sword, I can tell the difference, Death King. You foolish child, you walk the Demonic Path. The very heart of your sword arts is completely opposite to his, so how can you be his heir? Pfft.”

I could feel the followers falling silent. They stopped in their tracks or continued fighting, but they all listened intently to the conversation between the elder and me. The Constellations weren’t any different.

[The Incarnation of Love and Lust is at a loss.]

“The Sword Emperor is dead.”

Her chuckle filled the air. When the elder laughed, the tail of the broom she was riding on shook slightly, as if mocking the unsettled Constellations.

“Let’s say that bastard left behind a secret manual of his skills and trained an heir. Yeah, there might be a disciple of that guy somewhere! But you, Death King, aren’t his disciple.”

I’ll wait a little longer.

“You say you have inherited the Sword Emperor’s will, so you’re his heir, yes? What is that bastard’s will anyway? Do you think it was his will to rebel against my Magic Tower? Ha. If that’s the case, then all of you, tens of thousands of you, are his heirs!”

Just a little longer.

“You worthless vermin. Constellations are always like this. Ah, there’s not a single decent one among those who claim to be gods. Even though they know something is not true or impossible, they still try to push forward with their campaigns, bringing in some nobody rascal and making a fuss about the Sword Emperor’s return or whatever—”

Yeah. Now’s the time.

“Hello, idiots! You should air out your rooms every now and then. If you stay in your rooms all day and night, it messes with your brains, you guys,” I said.

The elder froze.

“Well, I’m feeling generous today! So I’ll remodel your place for free today! I’m supposed to laugh next, but even though I’m a master of method acting, I can’t laugh like that. I have to maintain some level of dignity, right?”

I could feel her gaze on me. When our eyes really met, the only thing that mattered was sizing each other up. Time stopped. Nothing else mattered.

Just a moment ago, the elder was focused on tearing me and the others down. Using speeches, provocation, and schemes, she was prepared to find our weakest points and tear us apart. She just wanted to buy some time for the retreating Spiders and make the followers doubt their Constellation, ultimately leading to victory in the battle. None of that mattered anymore.

Among the countless names she had, I mentioned the nickname that only the Sword Emperor had called her by, making sure to mimic the Sword Emperor’s expression, way of speaking, and smile.

“Hey, Gray. You still live like this? How come you haven’t changed even after a hundred or a thousand years? I think this is a sign of disease at this point. A disease, I’m telling you. You’re basically challenging the world. You think that if you change, you’ll lose to the world, right? From now on, I’ll call this sickness Gray Disease. Consider it an honor.”

“You,”

the elder said.

“You...”

“

Hehe.

It’s a joke. How about that? Was that funny this time?”

A huge flow of mana swirled around the clouds above the city. Even the Spiders retreating to the Magic Tower flinched and looked back, gazing up at the sky. The five towers shook, causing an earthquake throughout the city. I saw many things, but none of them mattered.

“Okay. That look in your eyes is what I wanted to see.”

The moment I raised the holy sword, the swirling mana in the sky rushed toward me.

1. So this part is supposed to be nonsense. Doesn't mean anything. It's a wordplay using the similar pronunciation of words. The captain part is from a Korean literature novel called Captain Lee(꺼삐딴 리). ☜