CH 236

Legend’s Second Coming (4)

When I woke up, the snow-covered field had disappeared into nothingness.

“Your Highness!”

Instead of the rushing wind, only the sound of the Marquis of Bielefeld calling out to me was heard. His voice felt so strangely surreal, so I stayed blank for a while.

“Your Highness! Your Highness! I’ve called someone, so wait a while!”

The marquis continued to scream without knowing that I was awake. His pale, tired face seemed to be a great deal worried. I slammed my hand over his mouth.

“I’m okay. But because of you, marquis, I’m not going to be okay.”

The marquis stretched his eyes wide and looked at me.

“So stop shouting. Be quiet for a bit. My head is ringing.”

Only after the marquis nodded did I remove my hand.

“Sorry. Your Highness suddenly grabbed your heart and groaned, so I was surprised and called …”

The marquis, now a moderate distance away from me, told me that he was relieved, but the concern still showed on his face.

“I suddenly felt a slight throbbing in my chest. It seems that the magic sword’s curse did have a small effect on me after all.”

“That’s a big deal! The curse of such an ugly object has to be removed.”

The marquis quickly started making a fuss again, so I answered him, saying it wasn’t a big problem. In the first place, Gloomdark was not a weapon of high enough quality to damage my soul. Well, as far as I knew, it wasn’t.

The problem was that such an answer did not take into account the four hundred years I had been sleeping. I don’t know, but Verduisterung must have consumed countless measures of blood during those four centuries. For a magic sword that didn’t even reach to my toes in that age to affect me- I knew that the bloodshed hadn’t changed its essential character, so even if the moonsword had cut into me dozens of times, in the end, it could only show me an illusion.

I recalled the vision that the moonsword had shown me, and a man kneeling in a snowfield with his head bowed came to my mind. No part of the iron armor upon his body was intact, and the cloak and clothing he wore had become tattered by blades. He had spent a long time in the snow; it was beginning to pile up on his shoulders and head. The bare skin exposed under his torn clothes and shattered armor was frozen blue.

The appearance of a body frozen in the cold of winter was exceptionally clear and memorable to me.

‘Dudududud’

My heart became hurt merely by me searching my memories. The pain I had felt when the man had pushed the sword into his chest came into my mind.

“Your Highness…”

If it weren’t for the voice of the Marquis, I would have stayed blank without getting out of the lingering vision.

“Oh? No… I had something to think about for a second.”

“Are you really okay?”

“If I say I am, then I am.”

Even though I’ve said I’m okay many times, the marquis didn’t stop being stubborn after making me promise I’d allow someone else to look at my body.

“Keep in mind: Many are hoping that the Knight of Dawn will survive. The same is true of me.”

After that, the marquis and his endless nagging left, and I was alone again. The scene of a snowfield came into my mind. The figure of the man who put his sword into his chest while moving his lips was clearly drawn. I moved my lips, recalling the shape of his mouth.

However, in the midst of a vision wherein everything was clear, only the man’s face was strangely blurry, so it was not easy. I did not give up and repeatedly reproduced the shape of his mouth.

“Light at dawn. Darkness, sunlight, border…” I recited a list of fragmentary words whose meaning was unknown. After countless attempts, I was able to complete the first sentence.

“Morning comes through the darkness ripped from dawn’s light-”

The moment I finished speaking the sentence, I suddenly had a terrible headache. The pain- It was as if someone was stirring the contents of my head with a flaming skewer. I stretched my mouth wide open. I couldn’t even scream, and I struggled with the pain for a long time.

When the pain disappeared, it was only after my whole body was soaked in sweat. My flesh tingled as if an aftertaste of the pain, not yet gone, remained on my entire body. I felt bloated.

Nevertheless, I- “Look at this-” I laughed. It was because the entire situation was occurring so arbitrarily.

“It looks like it wasn’t just an illusion.”

At first, I thought it was the memory of one of the poor souls that Gloomdark had consumed. But I didn’t believe that anymore. The timing was too precise and the pain too terrifying when I had spoken the words; it wasn’t just a coincidence. It felt like… “A diversion.”

Had someone unknown intentionally been distracting me? Just to be sure, I recalled the combination of words I had uttered a while ago. My headache started before I could even begin saying those words.

The pain blazed in my head, and in the mirror, I saw my eyes had turned white.

“Morning comes through the darkness ripped from dawn’s light.”

I struggled with the pain and did not stop combining words.

“Under the brilliant sunlight, the darkness turns ephemeral.”

My tongue twisted as if I was drunk. Everything was telling me: “Stop here. Stop at this point.”

Of course, I had no intention of doing that. The more severe the pain, the more complications occurred.

“Nowhere in night and day is there a place to stay.”

‘Jourleuk!’ Blood started to flow from my nose, its fishy scent filling my nostrils.

‘Biiii!’ I had become deafened, hearing only a sharp ringing in my ears. It felt as if the sky was falling and the earth rising; no distinction told me I was standing on a floor or floating in the air. Down, down I went, and with a ‘Plop!’ I started hearing sounds that seemed like audial hallucinations. A cold energy surrounded my whole body, and the chill came.

Moments ago, it had felt as if my head was burning; but now my body seemed to freeze.

And even at that moment, my body was sinking. I reached out my hand but couldn’t catch hold of anything. I kicked out with my feet; they touched nothing. All I could do was sink endlessly.

I looked down. The darkness was like an abyss that waited for me with its mouth wide open.

I looked up. It was as if I was peeking at the world from below the surface of a lake frozen in midwinter.

I saw my room. It was where I had been a little while ago, but it felt strangely far away.

Then all sense of touch disappeared; I didn’t even feel the chill. My senses of smell and taste were paralyzed. I couldn’t taste the fishy flavor and scent that filled my mouth anymore.

The world around me had faded away. The karma I had achieved, the oath I had made — everything was scattered into the abyss, one by one as if being naught but illusions. In that reality of blurry and obscure things, I began to differentiate between real and fake. Then I came to a conclusion: I had a dream. It was all just a pleasant dream I had after sleeping for a long, long time.

I was relieved, and at the same time, felt that it had all been in vain. I laughed at the comfort of my hard metal shell, not a fickle human body. I lamented at the numbness I felt within my body of cold iron. I was confused. Was I a human or a sword? Was I happy or sad?

And at some point, even the confusion disappeared, and nothing was left to me. I existed in a world that had reverted entirely to nothingness.

‘‘Morning comes through the darkness ripped from dawn’s light.’’

‘‘Under the brilliant sunlight, the darkness turns ephemeral’’

I quietly whispered. The comfortable darkness that surrounded me suddenly changed. I had revealed myself, and the void now rushed at me.

‘Woow! Woow!’

Darkness and emptiness bit into my soul at random.

‘‘Nowhere in night and day is there a place to stay.’’

Instead of screaming, I continued to move my lips. Feeling the torment of my dying soul, I completed the last verse. And at that moment- ‘Krrak Krrak’ cracks broke apart the world around me.

And, with a ‘Krrwuf!’ it completely collapsed.

‘Hwaak,’ my sense of touch came alive. The texture of my sweaty clothes was uncomfortable. Taste and smell returned to me, and my face contorted as I tasted the blood in my mouth.

“Hffoo,” I forced my mouth open and breathed in fresh air. After inhaling and exhaling many times, my somewhat faint sense of reality returned to its original state of clarity. As the sensations across my entire body became a complete whole, what I had felt moments ago came to life more clearly. I shuddered.

“I’d rather die than return to my sword again.”

It was only for an instant that I had felt the sense of having returned to my days as a sword. Nevertheless, I had felt eternal pain. Trapped in an iron coffin and forced to peek into the cloudy world was far more horrible than I remembered it to be. I clenched my fists, blew air over them, wriggled my body, took a deep breath — I enjoyed my senses as a human being for a while.

“I don’t know who constricted my soul like this, but it’s really bad.”

Only then did I get angry. If I could, I wanted to find the one who had tried to ban this knowledge from me; I wanted to return the painful favor in full. But unfortunately, it was very unlikely that he would be alive. The curse must be older than the first wielder of my true body that I could remember; it must have happened before the Great War.

I stood up in a hurry and grabbed a sword hanging in the corner of my room. The name engraved on the sword came into my eyes. The fact that the sword forged for me was called ‘Twilight of Dawn’, and the fact that the man had recited verses about the light at dawn… It was too coincidental. The figure of the man who had pushed the sword into his chest swam before my eyes. I didn’t feel the same pain that I had felt before. Yet, the timing had been too convenient.

“Is it a past life?”

I had believed I was a sword from the start, but that might not be true. It was an indescribable feeling. I once again recited the man’s song, the man who may have been my previous life.

‘‘Morning comes through the darkness ripped from dawn’s light…’’

‘‘Under the brilliant sunlight, the darkness turns ephemeral…’’

‘‘Nowhere in night and day is there a place to stay…’’

‘‘For the light of dawn wanders across the border…’’

I only then felt the loneliness and grief that had been hidden under the extreme pain, and the unintelligible final verse only then came into my mind. My heart was throbbing, and the area of my flesh where the man had inserted his sword was strangely painful.

I shook my head violently. It didn’t matter who I was in the past; what really mattered was the present and the future — not the past. And right now, I had something to do. The greatsword that stood far from my bed in a corner came into my eyes. It was a stupid magic sword that could not even sever my soul; it couldn’t so much as scratch it.

I took hold of the moonsword. Ominous energy permeated through my fingertips.

“You have drunk blood to a terrible degree.”

The smell of blood flowed from the sword, and I frowned. It wasn’t merely that the smell of the blood was so dark; no, for that matter, I had also spilled a lot of blood when I had lived as a sword. Nevertheless, it was very unpleasant, and for a single reason: most of the blood absorbed by the moonsword was not that of soldiers and knights on the battlefield.

“Children. Women. Old men.”

The blood belonged only to the powerless.

“This is not even a sword.”

Even the name of Verduisterung was a waste. It was just a bloody monster. On the opposite side of my room, there was a mounting that held my other half. I strode over and grabbed my body. It immediately trembled and released a cold energy. In an instant, the air froze.

“It’s time to eat.”

The air had been frigid; after I spoke, the coldness melted away. It was as if the frostiness that had spewed from the sword smoldered into nothingness.

‘Woow,’ it trembled — like a cute cat purring for its meal.