The Black-Clad Wraith

Everything around me was dark. But although it was dark, this place felt distinctly different from the endless void I had seen before losing consciousness.

Simply put, this place had form. It was quite spacious, a bizarre expanse piled high with human skulls and bones.

“What the hell is this……?”

Was this the afterlife or the world of the living? Was I even alive right now?

As I wandered through this incomprehensible graveyard of bones, it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps I had fallen into hell for all the sins I’d committed.

That was how dark and murky the energy permeating this place was, with something deeply unpleasant about it as well. Ghostly and demonic energies seethed ominously everywhere, enough to leave my head slightly dizzy.

“…….”

What kind of situation was this now? A sudden chill ran down my spine, so I stopped and looked back. In the distant darkness, a tall man darker than the darkness itself was walking toward me.

Everything about the man was strikingly black.

It would’ve been one thing if only his appearance and aura were dark, but the man was actually advancing toward me shrouded in an energy resembling pitch-black mist.

The man, who somehow looked as though even his heart was filled with darkness, stopped before me and opened his mouth.

“……For a mere human to come all the way here. Have you lost your mind?”

Only then did I look squarely at his face and become certain.

This man simply wasn’t human. There was no other way to describe him.

If the Cult Leader had seemed to be gradually drifting away from humanity, then this man’s eyes looked as though humanity had never dwelled within them to begin with.

Perhaps he was some nameless entity merely wearing the appearance of a man.

‘Utterly arrogant.’

I stared into the man’s eyes, from which black energy seemed to seep, and suddenly felt as though I were being compelled to answer. I barely managed to speak.

“I did not come here of my own will. If anything, I would like to ask you. What exactly is this place? Have I finally died and gone to hell?”

The black-clad man stared at me before asking in a tone of utter disbelief.

“……Brat, have you forgotten what you did at the cliff?”
“Ah.”

Only then did I recall how I had released all of the Demon Wail Sword’s demonic energy in a single instant before losing consciousness.

And when I opened my eyes, I had found myself in this ghost den of a place.

Going by instinct, my best guess was that this was some inner space within the Demon Wail Sword where it imprisoned souls.

“……It seems I’ve been trapped inside the sword. Did I die and get absorbed into it as a soul?”

The man answered indifferently.

“You are quicker on the uptake than you look. Correct. This is the prison of souls known as the Demon Wail Sword.”

Just as I thought. Only moments ago, I had been the one swinging the sword. Now I was a prisoner locked inside it.

What crime had landed me in such a filthy place? Apparently, failing to kill the Cult Leader in the end had been my offense.

The black-clad man suddenly asked me a question.

“……Why did you wield the Demon Wail Sword?”
“…….”
I couldn’t answer him for quite some time.

Truthfully, there was no special reason. I’d simply gotten pissed off and decided we should all die together.

I kept my mouth shut because I had a feeling an answer like that might get my skull smashed in by this man. But strangely enough, lying to him didn’t seem like it would work either, so I simply told the truth.

“……I simply thought we should all die together. Since they were the sort of people the world would be better off without.”
“Was that also why you betrayed the Cult Leader?”

I looked at the man and grinned like a lunatic.

“I couldn’t very well stand by and watch a bastard I disliked become the greatest under heaven.”
“……Are you insane?”
“How did you know?”
“Hah…….”

Only then did the man give a dry laugh of disbelief.

He looked like a man laughing for the first time in an eternity. Watching someone who didn’t even seem human make such a human expression felt strangely unsettling.

The man spoke to me in a tone slightly different from before.

“……What an amusing fellow. Never have I encountered anyone quite like you.”
“I am a rather rare specimen of a handsome man.”
“It’s especially that bullshit of yours that leaves an impression.”
“…….”

The man closed his eyes as though lost in thought and began murmuring to himself.

“……I never thought a day like this would come for me.”

What exactly did that mean? I couldn’t make sense of it, so I merely stared at him. Then the man opened his eyes and abruptly raised a hand, his long black robe fluttering as his palm pointed toward my face.

It didn’t look like he was about to slap me across the face, so what the hell was he trying to do?

A long silence followed. Then black energy gathered around the man’s hand, and pitch-black darkness began spreading in every direction.

Unable to do anything, I was slowly swallowed by the darkness.

Was I going to die like this?

The darkness blazed with all its might as it enveloped my body, until even the man disappeared from sight. Then my entire body began crumbling away little by little. Yet I felt no pain whatsoever.

I simply surrendered myself to the pitch-blackness as though being swallowed by a wave, slowly and futilely scattering away.

Just as even my five senses were about to disappear……the black-clad man’s emotionless voice echoed in my ears as the final sound I heard in that world.

“Even for me, this is the first time I have interfered with the natural order, and it will be the last. Sword Demon. You have lived bearing a title that branded you a demon, so this time, try living under a new name. This is the best I can do.”

I desperately wanted to shout for him to wait, but I couldn’t utter a word. There were too many things I wanted to know.

What his words meant, who that man was, what had happened to everyone who had been with me, what would become of the Kangho from here on…….

There was so much I wanted to know, but without receiving a single answer, I closed my eyes.

Then again, my life had always been like this. A life without a single right answer.

Before I could even finish looking back on the life I’d lived, I lost consciousness in a place where I couldn’t tell whether I was in the afterlife or the world of the living, reality or illusion.

It was a quiet early morning. The sunlight streaming through the window was so bright that it woke me from my sleep.

The stale stench of mold struck my nose first, and when I gradually opened my eyes, I saw an unfamiliar wooden ceiling.

Apparently, I was lying down. The problem was that I had absolutely no idea where I was or why I was lying there.

‘Where the hell am I?’

Come to think of it, hadn’t I been driven to the edge of a cliff and wielded the Demon Wail Sword? How in the world had I ended up lying here?

And that wasn’t the only strange thing.

The minor pains that had plagued me all my life as an aftereffect of demonic arts were gone, as was the excruciating agony from the wounds covering my body. In short, I felt strangely, impossibly healthy.

“What the hell is going on……?”

I immediately sat up, stripped off my sleeping clothes in one motion, and inspected every inch of my body.

My suspicion was right.

The skin was pale, as though it hadn’t seen sunlight in a long time, but neither the scars I’d acquired long ago nor the sword wounds I’d suffered while being pursued by the cultists were anywhere to be found.

Forget wounds, there wasn’t even a scratch on me. It was as though this body had never shed a single drop of blood.

It didn’t seem remotely possible. No matter how extraordinary a divine physician might be at healing a person, they couldn’t make old wounds cease to have ever existed. Unless, of course, I had somehow gotten an entirely new body…….

‘Huh, wait. A new body?’

Goosebumps rose all over me. I hurried off the bed, snatched up a small mirror from a table in the corner, and peered into it.

And reflected in the dusty mirror was……the face of some young man wearing an utterly bewildered expression.

“What the hell……?”

Sometimes a person could become so bewildered that words simply failed them. That was exactly what was happening to me.

Everything about the situation was one bewildering development after another. I’d fought a bloody battle against the Demon Cult, lost consciousness, and awakened in an unfamiliar little room. On top of that, I’d somehow ended up in the body of a young man I’d never seen before.

The wrinkle-free face felt so unfamiliar that I kneaded it as though I were handling someone else’s. As I did, the words of the black-clad man I’d met in that dream or illusion-like place suddenly came back to me.

‘Even for me, this is the first time I have interfered with the natural order, and it will be the last. Sword Demon. You have lived bearing a title that branded you a demon, so this time, try living under a new name. This is the best I can do.’

Was this what he’d meant when he told me to live under a new name?

‘This is what you meant by the best you could do?’

I returned to the bed, forced myself to calm down, and tried to organize my thoughts. None of this made the slightest bit of sense, but for now, I did my best to understand what had happened.

Judging from the circumstances, I had died once, then been released from the prison of souls with the help of the man inside the Demon Wail Sword. Would escaped be more accurate than released? I had no idea.

In any case, thanks to him, I had undergone a sort of reincarnation into a new body.

That absurd fact was the whole story behind my current predicament.

The problem was that I had no idea who the original owner of this body was or what connection he might have had to me.

Forget the identity of this body. I didn’t even know where I was. I truly had no information whatsoever.

Everything was a mystery. I had countless questions but no way to answer any of them, and just as the frustration began building inside me……something seemed to roll off the bed. I turned my head and saw a very familiar pitch-black longsword lying on the floor.

“…….”

It felt like one more thing had just been added to the list of things giving me a headache. Why the hell was that here?

In other words……the secret treasure I’d stolen from the Demon Cult in my previous life, an unprecedented demonic wraith sword capable of shaking all under heaven, was now lying around on the floor of this decrepit little room.

‘One damn problem after another.’

At this point, I wasn’t even surprised anymore. If the Demon Wail Sword was here, then the black-clad man I’d seen must have sent both me and the wraith sword to this place together.

I couldn’t guess what his purpose was, but perhaps it was his idea of a gift.

Though frankly, I wasn’t sure whether I should consider that insane haunted sword a gift.

Who in their right mind would want to possess a demonic sword dangerous enough to swallow all those Demon Cult masters in a single instant?

With things turning out like this, a sigh escaped me before I even realized it.

“Haa…….”

I shifted my gaze beyond the window. I had no idea exactly where I was, but this certainly didn’t seem to be a large town.

Before me stretched a backwater village so rustic I could almost smell the countryside just by looking at it.

“…….”

If he was going to reincarnate me anyway, couldn’t he at least have put me in the body of some rich bastard handsome enough to turn heads? Why did it have to be some country bumpkin from a backwater like this?

Granted, I wasn’t exactly in a position to be picky, but I just couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed.

‘So much for lazing around and living easy in this life too. Damn it…….’

And just like that, the dream I’d been harboring in my heart came to an end.