Chapter 2

No matter how much time passes, there are moments one can never forget.

The night scene of one unusually clear and cool summer evening.

The instant when I was carelessly raising a glass with my comrades.

And the procession of beasts we first encountered and the screams of people dying brutally.

The hollow gazes I had to face continually after that day would vanish whenever the wind stirred ripples, yet they still tightened around my throat beneath the surface.

• Rumble -

The thunder rolling outside drowned out the faint sounds of people’s screams.

Soon a fierce wind and rain began to blow.

I looked down at my father, fallen on the ground.

His tautly contracted entrails and ribs, tangled and embedded, gave off a stench, and his limbs, thrown about, were twisted at unnatural angles.

His spine had probably been broken.

A dark shadow I had completely forgotten shimmered under the weak candlelight.

“Aaah…”

A sigh escaped my lips despite myself.

The beast, its head bowed, began to wail in a low voice.

Its mouth, stained dark red, opened to reveal sharp teeth.

A lightning strike lit up the moment our eyes met, and we took each other in with our gaze.

My eardrums felt like they might burst with each heartbeat.

The hand that gripped the wooden sword was clenched as if rooted, and in my head I pictured cutting the beast’s throat into hundreds of pieces.

And I realized.

I would probably live this nightmare forever.

There were countless kinds of beasts, yet I could recall every single one.

The beast before me was one of the more common ones I had seen.

It was clearly one of the smallest and weakest of the beasts.

Still, for ordinary people it was undoubtedly a creature from nightmares.

It was always like that.

They would devour those who only wanted to live without great desire and strangle hope’s neck, leaving them unable even to scream.

So those things had to die.

The beast, resembling a dog or a wolf, flashed four twisted eyes.

The eeriness of its teeth, layered two or three deep and razor-sharp.

I extended the sword forward to keep my distance.

With no abilities now, as a boy’s body, I couldn’t afford a single mistake if I was to take it down.

But the cramped space was limited.

Pushed by its strength, I was forced into the corner it wanted.

As if waiting, the beast thrust its maw toward me.

It aimed for the hand holding the wooden sword.

I couldn’t step back, but I quickly thrust the tip of the sword under its jaw.

• Scrape -

The sharp tip of the sword pushed through thick hide with a dull sound.

It couldn’t fully pierce, but it must have dealt considerable damage.

As proof, the beast jerked its head back roughly and retreated far.

I didn’t miss that opening.

Using the wall behind me for footing, I sprang toward the beast and brought the blade down on its face with all my weight.

“Kiiing—!!”

The thin skin over its eye socket was struck, and dark red, sticky fluid oozed out.

I succeeded in taking half its vision as intended, but the sword snapped under the beast’s thrashing forepaw.

And the beast was cunning.

Realizing I’d lost my means of attack, it recklessly lunged and bit into my shoulder.

Before I could even cry out from the burning pain, its heavy forepaw shoved me, and I was flung, flesh torn, rolling pathetically across the floor.

The air touching my exposed skin felt like needles pricking the flesh.

‘It’s coming.’

With each movement, unfamiliar waves of agony surged, but I couldn’t collapse and sob—there was no one to indulge such weakness.

The beast, seemingly riled up, flexed its muscles violently and charged right up to my face.

My blood-red shoulder seemed to catch its eye like a target, and I flung myself aside to barely avoid the attack.

With a thud it rammed into the shop wall and didn’t even howl.

Its remaining two eyes stared at me as if to pierce me, and its mouth curled upwards as if enjoying it.

Then my vision warped for an instant.

I exhaled compressed, hot breath and tried to grasp the situation.

A belated wave of pain scorched my lungs.

The firmly closed warehouse door behind me groaned as it collapsed.

I saw the beast leisurely shaking its head between its legs.

It seemed to have taken advantage of my roll to slam into me.

I staggered and reached out to get up by any means.

Then I grabbed something caught in my hand and pulled myself up.

Clutching the broken wooden sword so tightly my hand went pale, I embraced the charging beast and swung my arm.

At its scarred neck and the eyelid that squirted a mixture of blood and pus.

At the maw shaking its head to tear off my left shoulder.

“Waaaaaah!!”

Perhaps from the pain, hot liquid burst from my blurred eyes.

I stabbed, gouged, and stabbed again.

I swung wildly until the broken tip of the sword rammed into its skull.

And finally, until its body went limp.

I barely wriggled out from under its corpse.

Clinging to fading consciousness, I pressed my weapon into its chest without hesitation.

The blunt end of the sword crushed through its hide and flesh, guiding me deeper bit by bit.

Oh gods.

My cruel gods.

At last I understand your will.

Wasn’t fate the schedule the gods impose on those who would bear such weight?

The war had not ended, and I had not burned through the life given me.

Then what I must do would be no different than before.

I barely set the sword down and thrust my trembling hand into the dark red cavity, pulling out the faintly beating heart of the beast.

The only method by which past humans could stand against evil.

The last mercy to counteract crushing fate.

To swallow the core lodged in the heart and make it my strength.

Just as the beast had swallowed my father’s body, I too chewed and swallowed the beast’s heart.

The man’s wet hair, whipped by the violent wind and rain, could not hide his movements.

A hulking man easily over two meters tall drove a greatsword through the beast’s neck with an expressionless face.

The panting beast’s throat was torn savagely, and the man ripped off its head with brutal hands and, as if matter-of-fact, tossed it behind him.

Thud.

The head bounced off a collapsed beam and vanished into the shadows.

Listening to the clamorous rain, the man took in the sight of the village stained dark.

Thick raindrops fell onto the headless corpses of the beasts.

The man moved slowly and entered a building with its door open.

Between bloodstains, claw marks, and collapsed shelves, he surveyed the body of a man.

The man lay in a pitiful heap amid guts and pieces of flesh scattered noisily.

The man turned his head indifferently and tracked the beast’s traces.

He had clearly heard screams here.

Stepping over the broken door into the shadow-filled warehouse, the man waved his hand toward a candle on the wall.

A modest flame rose and took away some of the shadows.

A woman hanged from the ceiling stuck out a dark blue tongue.

Below her lay a beast with its chest torn open, motionless, and beside it was a boy breathing heavily, smeared in blood.

“Was this your doing?”

At the man’s flat question, the boy blinked several times as if trying to focus.

Only then did the man notice the boy’s ragged shoulder.

The man knelt before the boy and, with a hand like a pot lid, placed it on the boy’s shoulder. The boy flinched, but the man paid it no mind.

For an instant flames rose, and the smell of burning flesh filled the warehouse.

The boy rolled his eyes back and lost consciousness.

The man grabbed the boy’s nape like a puppy and slung him over his shoulder.

I did not know the reason.

A familiar discomfort felt like it was tearing my body apart.

A fire crawling through my stomach began twisting my insides at will.

I tried to swallow the monster’s core to absorb the power contained within.

The method was not wrong. Having done it tens, hundreds of times, there could be no mistake.

Within me, a great energy rampaged violently as if a war had broken out.

It was a mighty force beyond imagining—not the weak energy a young boy’s body could handle from some petty beast.

‘What is this?’

It felt as if it had been full from the very beginning.

The energy swelled continually, perhaps many times larger than in my previous life. At this rate my heart surely wouldn’t withstand it and would burst.

I gathered all my mind, steadying my body trembling with pain, to identify what it was.

Two clearly different energies.

Among them, a speck-sized energy was rampaging like mad.

I tried to gather it, but like a foal thrown into a catastrophic blaze, it scattered in all directions.

Then the immense energy began to gnaw at my heart as if taking revenge.

The pain of being chewed and ground by saw-like teeth surged upward.

I vomited sticky blood along with clear bile.

A lightning bolt struck just then, illuminating the dark warehouse.

“Aaah…”

Only then did I become aware of someone else’s presence besides me and the beast.

My mother. The mother I loved dearly.

Scenery I hadn’t seen flooded into my mind.

My father barricading the door and shouting. My mother screaming and wailing.

Father must have tried to protect mother until the end.

The doorknob breaks, the shop door opens, and my father falls.

Mother, who barely hid inside the warehouse, forces down her sobs and clamps her mouth shut.

Shouts. The beast lightly charging as if enjoying the situation.

It bit at father’s limbs as he swung metal to drive it off, and with its powerful jaws it must have twisted his joints.

The beast, using father’s exhausted screams as relish, slit open his soft belly and shoved its snout in.

At father’s dying cry to run, mother hesitated and then hanged herself.

The teeth dug into the gums, and there was the metallic taste of blood.

The sound of crying leaked out little by little through the gap.

“Damn it. Damn it!”

My head is hot. Drops of blood burst forth as I cough.

I’ll somehow chew you up and swallow you.

The energy of the heart-rending beast struggled, and scant faint energies mixed into it.

Without hesitation I seized that energy and drove it into my chest.

The energy no longer gnawed me, but it fought desperately to scatter.

I don’t know how much time it will take to absorb this absurd energy.

At some point my vision blurred. I had no strength left even to move my fingertips.

Then, a huge shadow appeared inside the darkened shop.

For a moment the space was brightly lit and the man’s face came into view.

Did I do this?

Yes.

I strained desperately to take in the man’s appearance, but my blurred gaze showed no sign of returning. Abruptly, the man’s hazy face drew near.

A terrible agony followed.

I then lost consciousness.