The Undying (2)

“The Undying.”
“……”

The man was simply sitting there. Not dying.

Ttubuk, ttubuk.
Solomon walked into the room without hiding his loud footsteps. They echoed through the empty room. The man did not even lift his head.

‘No shackles. No restraints. He isn’t even tied up.’

Solomon’s gaze swept over the man in the chair. Wrists, ankles, nowhere showed a trace of restraint. It was like they never meant to bind him at all.

“The door was open.”

So Solomon asked, deliberately calm.

“It looks like you could just leave. Did you not have the confidence to get out of that maze?”
“……”

No answer came. The silence dragged on. He couldn’t know how long it really was. It might have been one minute. It might have been ten.

“……Leave.”

At the end of the silence, a voice rang out. Like desert sand-wind, with every trace of emotion dried out.

“And go where?”
“Anywhere’s better than here. At least there’ll be sunlight.”
“……Sunlight.”
Silence again. At the end of it, the man let out a phft, like air leaking out. It sounded so strange and hollow you only realized later it was ‘laughter.’

“This world where the sun rises and sets is my prison.”

The man spoke.

“Even if I leave this room, leave the mansion, and leave the city, what spreads out where I open my eyes is the prison called ‘tomorrow.’”

It wasn’t something you could sum up with boredom or disgust with life. It was fatigue. The fatigue of someone who repeated the same acts countless times and learned that simple fact, that nothing changed.

“Now I’m curious how you ended up like this.”

Solomon asked.

“I was…… cursed.”

A curse. Nothing surprising.

“By whom?”
“By the son of god.”

The Son of God. Putting aside that an evil god’s daughter was born just the other day, in this world there was only one being meant by that phrase. A tale from an absurdly old age. An ancient era so old even Vlad Țepeș called it fossil-level.

「The bloodlines of that ancient civilization, just because only their clan could hear the silent absolute being’s voice…… were far too arrogant. That brought about their downfall.」
「Even after the son of god was born, they mocked him, persecuted him, and nailed him to the cross, earning the absolute being’s wrath.」

And so the Iscari civilization drew the absolute being’s wrath and perished in sulfur and firebolts overnight.

“So the one who cursed you was…….”
“Yeah. The very one we persecuted and nailed to the cross.”

The man said with a hollow laugh.

“When the son of god was punished to bear the cross, I was a cobbler on the street where he happened to grow tired and sit down for a moment.”

A cobbler. The Undying was a man with an ordinary trade.

“He was in the way of business, so I told him to get the hell away from in front of my shop. Then the son of god said this.”

「Hey, don’t loiter in front of my shop. Get the hell out!」
「I cannot rest now and must go on, but you shall go on until the last day.」

As a bloodline of the Iscari civilization that insulted the son of god, he was cursed.

“We nailed the son of god to the cross. The Father’s wrath brought down a rain of fire and sulfur, and everyone died and fell. Ridiculously, I survived.”

The fall of the ancient Iscari civilization. In that midst, the man survived. Because he couldn’t die.

“Because he said only on the day the son of god returns, the day of his second coming, the final day, would I finally be able to rest.”
“……”

Solomon didn’t answer. He was right there in front of him. A survivor of the ancient civilization said to have fallen. The last survivor of the Iscari civilization said to be able to hear the voice of the silent Father.

“You’ve lived that long and you’ve got old knowledge. How did you end up like this? I heard the ancient civilization’s technology is something even the guilds of this era are coveting.”
“A king. I’ve even played at being a king in the past.”

The man spoke.

“I was once, across an immeasurable history, the ruler of countless kingdoms and empires you wouldn’t even dare imagine.”
“Ah. So you’ve enjoyed everything there is to enjoy.”
“Truly, there were many names. Xšayāršā, Ahasverus, Xerxes I…….”

As if it truly didn’t matter.

“But now I’m nobody. A vagrant. A beggar. A wandering laborer. A wine barrel…… something, and nothing.”

With that, the man’s eyes lost their light again. Like a recorded video ending playback and returning to silence. Watching those eyes, Solomon soon realized it. This wasn’t a conversation. It was just a phonograph playing one-sided sound.

“Nothing will change.”

Solomon muttered too. He wasn’t asking for an answer.

“Because I came to kill you.”

Solomon pulled the thread mechanism in his sleeve and readjusted his grip on the Ghost Whale Bone Blade. Then he silently went around behind the chair and stood behind the man. The man didn’t resist. He didn’t even twitch. He didn’t even pay attention to Solomon moving behind him.

‘Human assassin…….’

The last Magus offering the gift of myrrh. A mortal symbol even a god couldn’t be an exception to.
That god-slaying mark was on his blade tip right now. No, it wasn’t just on the tip. It was Solomon’s very existence.

That was why the immortal before him was the perfect opponent to test that power.
The Undying.

This was no longer a clash between a shield that blocks anything and a spear that pierces anything. His spear was designed from the start to pierce an unpierceable shield.

Kwachik!
There was no time to sink into sentiment. The blade tip holding the qualification of death drove down. Into the back of the man’s neck.

‘……I don’t feel anything particularly different.’

Like Rosetta said, the human body is crude. It stops functioning easily from something as simple as stabbing a vital point at the back of the neck.
The neck isn’t deep like the heart. It isn’t wrapped in bone like the brain. Even so, cervical vertebrae, spinal cord, blood vessels, nerves, all the core functions needed to sustain life are packed together in disorder. A structure as fragile as it gets.

Break one link in that chain and life stops at once. And it really did.

Tuk.
The man in the chair let his head slump forward. His arms dangled limp in the air. Immediately, like a machine with its cable pulled.

“Did I get him?”

Watching that, Solomon muttered like it was someone else’s business. He knew it. There was no way this was the end. That was why he said it on purpose.

A brief silence fell.

“Come to think of it, young man…….”

At the end of the silence, the man’s voice came, his head still drooping. Without dying.

“Did I ever tell you the definition of madness?”
“!”

Kwachik, kwachik!
Right after, something tore through the man’s shoulder blades and surged up.

“Madness is…….”

Wings. More precisely, flesh and blood and bone forcing the shoulder blades wider, tearing skin, growing bone, barely mimicking the shape of wings.

“Madness, is, repeating, the exact, same, thing, endlessly. Believing that next time will truly be different.”

Something far too bizarre and grotesque to call wings. They spread so absurdly large they filled the room. Countless eyes and mouths clung to them in chaotic disorder.

[Curse Resistance Roll in Progress…….]
[Resistance Failed!]

At that moment, the die rolled just from looking at it. Before Solomon could even grasp the result, it was already happening.

“Memento mori.”
“……!”

It was the memory of death.
Death from being hanged in the square.
Death from the blade falling beneath the gallows.
Death from being beaten by the crowd into a bloody mess.
Necks severed by blades, strangled with ropes, burned, seared, cut…… the scenes from all the portraits along the corridor Solomon walked through earlier flashed past. As the very person in them.

“!”

—They were the man’s memories of death. As the Undying, deaths he faced without end.
It wasn’t something actually happening. And it was only a tiny fraction of the man’s countless memories.
That was enough. Enough to call this act a 「curse」.

“……!”

All kinds of deaths coiled around Solomon and assaulted him.
His consciousness felt like it would collapse at any moment. Despair surged up. It felt like he would go mad in pain.

Stagger.
In endless despair, strength left Solomon’s legs. He sank down. Toward the slumped Solomon, wings formed by forcing bone and flesh to stretch into shape…… descended.

Mercy at the end. This could end it. In Solomon’s eyes, it didn’t look like the terror of death. It looked like merciful, beautiful wings that would finally free him from life. So he didn’t resist.

‘Ah.’

That was when it happened.
Without meaning to, truly without meaning to, he didn’t know why it came to mind. He realized there was a sugar cube Lady Rosetta had given him in his pocket.

—When the bitterness is too strong, dissolve it in and add it.

Bitterness. Ridiculously, what Solomon was tasting now was the world’s bitterness. As he despaired before it and accepted the approaching death, he thought of the sugar cube. The sweetness of sugar engraved on the tip of his tongue.

“……!”

Bitter, sweet, bitter, sweet, sometimes more bitter. For someone else, a little sweeter. That was how the world worked. Solomon remembered.

[Curse Resistance Reroll……]

Once again, from far away, the sound of dice rang out.

[Resistance Success!]

When the sound came, Solomon was already kicking off the ground. The wings surging in to wrap him also moved in a hurry.
A bone javelin that kept growing in rapid, uncontrolled bursts like exostosis or fibrodysplasia ossificans, then shot out in a spike-like form.

What had now torn up through the man’s back was less wings and more a skeletal conglomerate of countless bone spears grotesquely tangled together. Eyes grew bizarrely between them, separate from the lips.

“……”
“Hoo, I almost died.”

Solomon muttered like it was someone else’s business. Unfortunately, Solomon wasn’t someone who couldn’t die. And it wasn’t like he lacked the will to live enough to accept death without resistance.

In this world, his goal was only one thing. Survive.

“Come to think of it, young man…….”

Watching that, the Undying asked again. He stayed seated in the chair. The bone wings rising along his shoulder blades moved.

“Did I ever tell you the definition of madness?”
“Live long enough and your head starts slipping around a lot?”

Solomon sneered, and that was when it happened.

“Death.” “I.” “Remember.” “Madness.” “Death.” “Madness.” “I.” “Remember.” “Definition.” “Madness.” “Remember death.” “About.” “Definition.” “I.” “Did I say?” “Did I say?” “Death.” “I.” “Remember.” “Madness.” “Death.” “Madness.” “I.” “Remember.” “Definition.” “Madness.” “Remember death.” “About.” “Definition.” “I.” “Did I say?” “Did I say?”

From the man’s wings, countless mouths began chattering at once. The same words, endlessly.
Even then, the man himself sat in the chair and muttered on. The same words.

“Madness is…….”
“By the way, I just thought of a technique.”
“Repeating the same thing…….”
“I even came up with a name for it.”
“Endlessly…….”
“You know, in the sense of cutting lightning…….”
“Repeating it. Believing that next time will truly be different…….”

Talk or don’t. Solomon readjusted his grip on the hilt. He calmly muttered what he had to say.

“Thunder Sever.”

Right after, the human assassin kicked off the ground like a flash of lightning. Into the endlessly repeating definition of madness.

Kwachik!
Solomon’s blade tip pierced the Undying’s heart.

“Remember…… death.”

Once again, death flowed out.