Chapter 44

Chapter 44. Awakening (1)

"Survival day 1,135…"

A man looked around inside the darkness.

He could see coffins meant for holding corpses.

Coffins laid out tightly, row upon row — tens of thousands.

Those stacked further, layer upon layer — hundreds of thousands.

From a distance, it looked like a massive apartment complex built from death.

"This time…"

Each coffin had a long band along its side, and the bands were colored either red or blue.

The man counted the coffins whose colors had changed.

"About 4,000 have given up?"

The red coffins had increased.

Lately, the rate of increase had been growing worse.

'Please…'

Kim Jun — Jeolla-Man — had been a civil servant in charge of promoting Jeolla-do.

Several years ago, he and 300,000 citizens of Jeonju had been sucked into the Void.

An entire city had been seized by a Bizarre phenomenon, presumed to have derived from a Gate.

Countless people had begun to die.

Some had drifted through the Void and gone missing, and others had departed claiming they'd met a god within the darkness.

Those who remained leaned on one another like flames in the wind and gathered into one place.

Their anchor was…

"Why was it me?"

Kim Jun sighed amid a world full of coffins.

He was merely a famous civil servant, yet people had leaned on that fame and relied on him.

No one was there to answer his question.

"This might not even be the answer."

His hollow murmur simply drifted outward from amid the massive heaps of coffins.

[Coffins]

The nameless coffins had been the hope of Jeolla-do's citizens.

Certainly, in the beginning, that was so.

Now, 1,135 days later, he had reached the point of wondering whether they were the final curse.

Vvng—.

Again.

More red coffins had appeared.

'What on earth are they experiencing inside those coffins?'

According to the rules he'd discovered within the Void, this space beguiled or drove humans mad.

To avoid that, Kim Jun had led the citizens through the darkness, and in the process, found the lifeline called [coffins].

If one entered a coffin…

A human could survive without losing their mind.

"Everyone except one caretaker."

Kim Jun had become the sole human in this space who could not sleep — and yet was unaffected by the Void.

Because he had become the [Gravedigger].

By his choice, countless citizens had entered the coffins.

'Was it the wrong choice?'

Having been made to lead everyone, Kim Jun had believed the coffins found in the Void were the best means of survival.

A way to live without going mad, to keep one's sanity intact.

The only hope for surviving in this space devoid of any sustenance.

"Please…"

And yet.

Perhaps that was not the answer after all.

Vvvng—.

Again.

More red coffins had appeared.

The people lying inside the coffins could not come out.

Their only option was to choose whether or not to end this life — nothing else.

'Graves.'

The red coffins were graves.

It meant that over 1,135 days, those who had been adrift in the Void had given up on life of their own volition.

On the other hand…

'Not yet.'

The blue coffins were the desperate defiance of those who had not yet given up.

Humans lying asleep with tubes inserted in their throats, waiting for tomorrow.

Kim Jun could not know what it was like for those lying in the coffins.

Those asleep in the coffins could not know what Kim Jun felt watching over them.

Both sides simply waited.

"What can I possibly do?"

Kim Jun — he could do nothing.

He merely survived without going mad inside this Void, watching the graves multiply.

Even so…

[Communication]

A strange power that had appeared at some point.

In this bizarre world where even [WorldNet] didn't function, it was the reason he alone had remained as the sole observer — the Gravedigger.

"Am I just shouting into nothing with no one listening?"

Sending messages alone to the outside was nothing short of torture.

All he could do was fire off one-way messages with no reply ever coming back.

Still, this was the only way.

Just as Kim Jun was about to send another rescue request to the outside.

That was when it happened.

CLAAANG———!!!

CLAAANG———!!!

CLAAANG———!!!

A strange resonance spread through the Void.

Kim Jun looked upward — into the darkness of unknowable depth — and tilted his head.

'Have I finally lost it?'

This place was near-perfect silence.

Not even the sound of breathing leaked from the graves of hundreds of thousands of citizens.

They said perfect silence could break a person's mind…

'The time for going mad has long since passed.'

Hadn't Kim Jun endured 1,135 days in this extreme situation?

He believed this was no auditory hallucination.

Kim Jun strained his ears.

CLAAANG———!!!

The noise of a hammer striking something.

It was far too vivid to be a hallucination, and the sound seemed to be growing louder.

"Day 1,135. Survivors: 171,302."

Kim Jun.

He murmured toward the empty air.

"For the first time, an anomaly has occurred. A noise resembling hammer strikes can be heard from outside."

Some kind of power converted his voice into text.

It was a peculiar ability that had appeared after he'd been trapped in this place — a rescue request he could use once per day.

Even without a reply, he was certain someone was listening.

'Please!!!'

If that wasn't the case, even he could no longer maintain hope.

Kim Jun murmured with the heart of a prayer.

"If rescue has come from outside, please look for a massive rectangular structure."

And so he spoke of even the graves — something he had never once revealed.

The massive structure built from stacked coffins.

Because they were not alone in this Void, he had desperately hidden this fact.

Because of the people who had vanished in the beginning.

Especially those who had disappeared claiming they'd 'met a god.'

'If those monsters arrive first…'

Having watched this space from the very beginning, Kim Jun knew that those people had transformed into something resembling 'monsters.'

Monsters of utterly hideous form.

One look was enough to recognize them as grotesque beings that tried to devour the living on sight.

It was amid such crisis that Kim Jun had divulged the information about these coffins.

'Please…'

The black spots rising from Kim Jun's fingertips were growing larger.

Kim Jun knew.

Now, he could not hold on much longer.

So.

CLAAANG——!!!

He wished that whoever owned that noise.

Was, please, a being who had come to save them.

—------------------------------------

—Ep. 16. Awakening.

 

The Void was an unidentified Bizarre from which the interior could not be observed from the outside.

But thanks to one-way messages transmitted from within, people had speculated that survivors might exist.

And now, that was an indisputable fact.

'A total of 170,000 survivors in Jeonju, Jeolla-do.'

From the moment the Saintess's card had been drawn, the survival of that population had become a clear and evident truth.

Each step I took was endlessly heavy.

Perhaps it was the overwhelming weight this space exuded.

Saaaaaaa———.

Inside a terrible darkness where no human could possibly live.

Black and deep darkness.

An abyss of unknowable depth.

A black hole that had consumed a portion of the world — its breadth impossible to gauge.

I stood alone in that darkness.

'Is this something like cognitive dissonance?'

Not just my sense of direction — even the flow of time and the sensations of my own body grew hazy.

I was just standing here doing nothing, yet it was like this.

Even I was affected this much…

'How on earth did they survive?'

The fact that 170,000 ordinary people had survived in here was simply too hard to believe.

Were they still fully 'human'?

Had they crossed the line of humanity for the sake of survival?

Or perhaps they were monsters who had abandoned their humanity, drunk on power.

Amid such tension, I stepped further into the darkness of the Void.

Saaaaaaa———.

The sound ceased.

I simply walked toward what felt like a deeper place, blindly.

Walking, I felt this space.

My body held the experiences of my swords, and their experiences were those of absolute beings who had witnessed the end of a world.

Therefore—

'This is…'

A feeling completely different from a Black Gate precursor.

'A barrier.'

I grasped the true nature of this space.

This place was one massive barrier — an artificial space created to conceal something.

What was hidden within this Void?

What was trying to be born from a Void that had consumed hundreds of thousands of people?

I intended to escape the barrier that had been shrouding me.

'Baby Sword.'

Calling upon a Transcendent sword for a mere barrier would be a waste.

Chaos — a neutral alignment.

The Baby Sword, which possessed the Authority to command time and space, would be ideal for this situation.

I drew the Baby Sword from its [Scabbard].

The small, delicate sword — still gradually growing, gradually hardening — let out its sword-cry to me.

Vvng—.

A resonant declaration that it would tear through the barrier caging me and open the way into the true Void.

'Let's go.'

A sword that had not yet Transcended.

But one that held possibilities stronger than any.

I swung the sword into the darkness.

Sreureuk.

A stark-white and pitch-black aura spiraled together in a tempest.

The two colors moved as though blending into one, yet never merged — each advancing along its own path.

That line quietly cleaved through the Void.

Zzzeok——.

The darkness yawned open to receive me.

What I felt beyond the barrier that had been blurring every sense was…

'The power of demons.'

Cruel and terrible death.

A land of death where nearly half of 300,000 citizens had perished.

Yet a land where the hope of 170,000 survivors still endured.

But what actually met my eyes was a man standing alone in solitude.

"…Today's survivors are—"

A man clinging to an enormous tree.

A man who looked like a withered old man, every trace of vitality drained from him, wrinkles everywhere.

He repeated a mumble to himself with glazed-over eyes.

I widened my field of vision.

Kuguguguguung———!!!

The man could no longer be seen.

The mumbling could no longer be heard.

There was simply an overwhelmingly massive tree trunk soaring to a dizzying height.

And clinging to that tree trunk, as though 'preserved,' were people — endlessly many — and some had melted and merged with the tree.

If they shared one thing in common, it was that aside from the first man, everyone was smiling.

'An eternal dream?'

I knew the true nature of the enormous tree the man had been clinging to.

A being that had devoured hundreds of thousands of humans, crossed the Gate, and still had power left over to corrode an entire region.

A tree so vast it was difficult even to perceive.

And yet, I couldn't help but let a faint smile escape.

That tree.

The corrupted World Tree.

It was my swords' favorite thing.

* * *

[A tree that grows by eating death.]

In the endlessly repeating world of Raise a Sword, the World Tree had been corrupted countless times.

Even before corruption, the World Tree had been inherently violent — and once corrupted, it committed atrocities no different from those of the Outer Gods.

Absorbing an entire nation whole to use as fertilizer, or converting all of nature's vitality into the energy of death so that no living thing could survive.

Or controlling its children — the elves — to spark continent-scale wars.

Through countless failures, I had come to realize that the 'World Tree' served as a kind of branching point.

So I had changed my strategy.

'An experience-points event.'

For my swords, the World Tree — corrupted or not — was 'experience points.'

"Hahah! Our demons shall devour every last morsel of the Earth Mother's body."

For Iris, the World Tree was the opportunity that had completed her demons.

"The iron called the World Tree has limits after all."

For Muratan, it had become an introductory primer for handling [inhuman] iron.

"O Pillar of the World, how have you forgotten your duty and turned to harming humankind?"

For the Saintess Yuria, it had become the catalyst that allowed her to 'purify' things originally thought to be good.

"O fallen, degraded tree — forget your grandiose past and depart. The age of noble humans has arrived—."

In Reinhardt's case, he had used it as the debut stage for unveiling the Forms he had perfected through long cultivation.

It was the same for the swords that had not yet awakened.

Therefore——

"Muratan."

I spoke the sword's name without hesitation.

Every sword had volunteered to be sent out, but the sword needed in this very moment was the [4th Sword, Muratan].

Inside that unfathomably massive tree, 170,000 citizens of South Korea were alive.

Kuung———.

A large, rough greatsword appeared.

Within my slowed sense of time, the absolute perception of a Transcendent settled into me.

The interior of the [Void], where nothing could be felt, began to blaze with the scorching heat of a forge.

Within that heat, my vision shifted.

'I can see them.'

The World Tree, blackened in corruption.

Inside the enormous black tree trunk, countless lines of red and blue were visible.

From the red lines, death could be felt — but from the blue lines, vitality still flowed.

It meant the World Tree was sucking out their nourishment.

In other words, they were living people.

'That many survivors…'

I raised the sword.

No — the hammer.

To sift the living from that monstrous tree.

Unlike the other swords, Muratan's assistance was essential for work like this.

And Muratan was quite cooperative at times like these.

Sure enough.

⦗Iron worth using, yet riddled with impurities.⦘

Muratan murmured.

⦗Iron must be pure. Worthless things that are not iron must never be mixed in.⦘

The meaning was simple.

For the sake of the iron called the [World Tree], he would separate out every last impurity — the [humans].

In the fleeting instant of Transcendence, the World Tree tried to threaten me.

Gurrrgle——.

Enormous tree roots broke through the ground from within the darkness.

They slithered through the air like ominous serpents, trying to corrode my surroundings.

But a smith's hammer must be faster than the movement of the iron.

My hammer struck the World Tree's main body before the roots could reach me.

CLAAANG———!!!

The world shook.