Chapter 36 - Episode 6. God of Despair (5)
Chapter 36: Episode 6. God of Despair (5)
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A short while later, Cheongheo opened his eyes.
“You brat who knows nothing of respecting the elderly.”
The spot where the scabbard had struck his eye still hurt.
Even so, Cheongheo said, “I have not lost yet. A match continues as long as you are alive.”
Jaehwan silently watched Cheongheo.
The old man had spent a thousand years honing his swordsmanship. That kind of time would have been impossible without such stubbornness.
“There is one thing I realized over my thousand years of life.”
“...?”
“In the end, the one who survives wins.”
“But you are already dead, old man.”
“If you are still alive a thousand years from now, I will admit my defeat.”
As though sick of hearing this, Jaehwan shook his head and pulled a sheet of paper from his clothes.
Cheongheo’s expression crumpled. It was the oath document Cheongheo himself had proposed right before their duel began.
“Did you forget this?”
“...”
Cheongheo’s face went pale when he saw the oath document.
Jaehwan read it with an impassive expression.
“There is something written here. I, Cheongheo the Divine Doctor of Despair, swear upon every beauty in Chaos and upon my own honor that I will faithfully carry out the contents of this oath according to the given result...”
“Damn it! Fine! Fine!”
The loser of the match would grant any wish the winner wanted.
That was the contents of the oath.
“So, what is your wish? If you intend to use me as a slave or something, I absolutely will not accept.”
“It is nothing like that. I do not need a slave like you.”
“W-What did you say?!”
“My demand is simple. Answer my questions sincerely. That is all.”
It was an unexpectedly modest demand. Cheongheo eyed him suspiciously for a moment, then nodded. They were only questions, after all. There was no reason he could not answer them.
“Fine.”
A brilliant light rose from the oath document and was absorbed into Jaehwan and the Divine Doctor of Despair’s bodies.
The oath’s fulfillment had begun.
Jaehwan opened his mouth.
“Old man, what exactly is a Master’s Tower?”
Master’s Tower.
For a moment, Cheongheo’s gaze grew distant.
“Kid. You know what the Tower of Nightmares is, right?”
Jaehwan nodded.
The Tower of Nightmares.
No one who came to this world could be unaware of that tower. It was the beginning of the tragedy that had dragged them into this world.
There was a race in this world called Dream Demons, and they created things called Towers of Nightmares.
The Tower of Nightmares.
In a sense, there could be no more fitting name. To every being treated as a Product, that tower was a nightmare itself.
“The towers made by those Dream Demon bastards have grades, from S-grade to F-grade. Towers created by Dream Demons ranked as 「Master Craftsmen」 or 「Apprentices」 usually receive those grades.”
It was something he had heard from Meikal before.
The Dream Demons were a race that devoted their lives to creating a single perfect tower. 「Master Craftsman」 and 「Apprentice」 were titles granted to them.
Meikal had said that the countless towers made by Master Craftsmen and Apprentices were evaluated by 《Cliché》, the Dream Demon guild. Their grades were decided after closely considering the ease of cultivation and the quality of the cultivated Products, in other words, their overall commercial value.
“Ordinary Dream Demons struggle to create towers of A-grade or higher. Once they make an A-grade tower, the guild recognizes them as 「Master Craftsmen」, and they can live in luxury. Just leasing their towers to cultivators in the 《Great Realm》 means they never have to worry about making a living again.”
Even Dream Demons, the nobles of the Great Realm, seemed to have to worry about making a living. It was somehow amusing.
“Still, there are Dream Demons who have no interest in a tower’s commercial value.”
“They must have made a lot of money.”
“Something like that. They made S-grade towers while they were still 「Apprentices」, so they no longer needed to create commercial towers.”
Meikal had said talent applied not just to humans, but to Dream Demons as well. Even among those exceptional Dream Demons, there were ones with such overwhelming talent that they reached the peak of 「Master Craftsman」 at an early age.
“This world calls them 「Masters」.”
The pinnacle of all Dream Demons.
The thirteen 「Masters」.
“Then does Master’s Tower refer to the towers made by those people?”
“No. A tower is not called a Master’s Tower just because a Master made it. Only the unusual towers they create for purposes completely unrelated to 「cultivation」 are called Master’s Towers.”
“Why did they make such towers?”
“I do not know either. No one knows what the Masters are thinking. Every one of them claims to be searching for the ‘truth of the world.’”
The truth of the world.
Jaehwan fell into thought for a moment.
Cheongheo continued.
“There are only two things that are certain. First, a small number of Master’s Towers created in that manner exist throughout the Great Realm. Second, among those who clear those towers, transcendent beings called Awakened Ones rarely appear.”
“From the way you speak, it seems you came from a Master’s Tower too.”
“That is right.”
Cheongheo grinned. He looked as though clearing a Master’s Tower was some great source of pride.
“I came from Master Melville’s fourth tower. The world knows that tower as 「Moby-Dick」.”
A shadow passed through Cheongheo’s eyes.
“A massive white whale appeared from the first floor onward. It seems laughably easy now, but it was a disaster to me back then. Many masters of the martial world died... Clearing that tower was nearly a miracle.”
A white whale.
It seemed towers did not come in only one form.
“Looking at you, it seems you also came from a Master’s Tower. Whose tower did you emerge from? Melville? Jorge? Or Scalzi?”
Names that seemed to belong to Masters.
Jaehwan spoke.
“Mulack. That was the name.”
Jaehwan recalled the information window that had appeared when he first recognized the tower as an item.
It had clearly said this.
“A provisionally named ‘Fortress of Regret.’ The second work of Mulack, a Dream Demon and Creator of nightmares. Those who answer the tower’s summons are plunged into the dream of a created Dream Demon.”
“...Mulack? Huh, to think there would be an Awakened One who cleared Mulack’s tower...”
“Do you know Mulack?”
Cheongheo slowly nodded, then spoke in a heavy voice.
“I have met him in the 《Abyss》.”
“You met him?”
“Strictly speaking, I did not meet him...”
Cheongheo hesitated for a moment before changing his phrasing.
“I should say we traveled together.”
Cheongheo looked deeply moved, as though he were counting something in his mind. From his expression, Jaehwan could roughly guess how old the name Mulack was.
“Heh heh. Those were fond days.”
A thousand years that had never been easy.
Those years flowed across Cheongheo’s dulled retinas, each one a separate scene.
Back then, Cheongheo had been young, full of spirit and passion. He had many Companions, along with an endless curiosity about the world.
He had hope.
Jaehwan did not press him. He felt he knew what Cheongheo was seeing. It was the least respect he could show for the old man’s thousand years of life.
After some time passed, Cheongheo finally spoke.
“Let us go for a walk.”
* * *
The cool night air filled their lungs.
Cheongheo did not say a word as they walked through the market street. Jaehwan waited patiently.
“Come on, have a drink before you go!”
The smell of food drifted from all over the street. Most of it was skewers made from specially processed horned beast meat. Some came with crops resembling corn or bananas. Perhaps farming was practiced here as well.
Farming.
Jaehwan found that somewhat strange.
As far as he knew, there was no real need to eat food in Chaos. He had not eaten anything for nearly thirty days since coming here, yet he had never felt hungry.
Everyone selling food wore a gloomy expression.
They did not simply look like people struggling through hard lives. It felt as though they lacked something more fundamental.
As if he had read Jaehwan’s thoughts, Cheongheo asked, “You find something strange, do you not? They do not seem alive at all, do they?”
“They are already dead.”
Cheongheo frowned at those words.
“A human cannot be called dead until they accept death themselves.”
Jaehwan once again realized that death in this world differed from the death he knew.
Cheongheo was right.
The people of 《Chaos》 still had their souls. The residents here had lives of their own as well. Besides, according to Mino, people here could return to life at very low odds.
“This place was not always like this.”
Even when Cheongheo had first come to 《Chaos》, Gorgon Fortress had not been so bleak.
“Chaos was originally a blessed world. It was a place where souls weary from the wars of the Great Realm could enjoy sweet rest.”
People in Chaos did not age.
They did not die even if they did not eat.
By being freed from their lives, every being found life again.
Warriors laid down their swords and bows.
Bards sang of peace instead of war.
“Back then, there were far fewer people suffering from soul contamination than there are now.”
The weak cooperated to hunt horned beasts. They ground their horns into powder and shared it among themselves. Alliances that would have been impossible in the Great Realm came into being, and races formed bonds of solidarity.
Most beings lived here content with their lives.
More precisely, they had, until ‘that incident.’
“...What happened?”
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