Remember Death

Kwachik!
The moment Solomon pierced the Undying’s heart, death flowed out. It was literal.
What poured from the Undying’s wound wasn’t blood. It was a record of death.

“!”

Stabbed to death, cut down, struck dead, beaten to death, shot dead, thrown to death, crushed to death, strangled to death.

Every kind of death he had endured was carved into Solomon’s body again.

Poison death, boiling death, burning death, drowning death, freezing death, beating death, curse death, blast death, erasure death, pit death.

Like the foolishness of charging a spiked shield, the wounds meant to be carved into him became records of death instead. They invaded Solomon’s mind in reverse. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t death itself. It was only memory.
Endless memories of death.

“Remember death.”

The man in the chair murmured calmly. He stayed in that posture, even as his heart was pierced.

“Death…….”

Right after, wings of flesh and blood and bone tore up through his shoulder blades. The countless eyes and mouths stuck to them all turned toward Solomon at once. He realized it. Each eye and mouth was a witness to death, and a voice of death.

“By the way, did I ever tell you the definition of madness?”

When he realized it, the Undying sitting there looked like…… a reaper to Solomon. A being that collected and recorded every form of death in the world. A being that witnessed the beginning and end of endless death.

“Madness is repeating death, endlessly.”
Pain threatened to collapse his consciousness. Fear surged up. The one who understood death and embodied it wasn’t Solomon, the human assassin. It was the Undying in front of him.

‘There’s no way…… I can kill him.’

Inside his death, countless mages were at work. Especially House Arrowhead, with methods of death close to madness. A light of death pierced him and erased him without leaving flesh behind, without leaving a single particle. The man did not die.
Then one day, in some place, he would open his eyes naked. Then he would start wandering again.

“Believing that next time, you’ll truly be able to die.”

After they realized nothing worked, they still kept killing him. Each time, the records of death piled up. In the end, it birthed a monster even they could not handle.

To him, the world was a prison. And the only release from that prison was death.
And the man was 「The Undying」.
Memories seeped in through the hilt embedded in his heart. Ultimate immortality.

Kwachik!
Solomon pulled the blade back. He had only glimpsed a brief instant within an unbearable record of death. Even so, fear made him pull the knife out and step back. Distance opened between them.

‘What am I afraid of?’

Solomon thought coldly. Every time he attacked him, he absorbed memories of death. Was he afraid of that?
Or was he afraid of the fact that no matter how many times he stabbed him, even his heart, even his cervical spine, he would not die? Was it both?

That day, Adina, the dark elf medium and Shaman Priestess of the Lake, had said it. The price of the rite resting on Solomon’s blade tip.

「There, you took the role of myrrh, meaning a god’s mortality. As the human assassin, a symbol that brings death to an immortal. A sign of a rite that ancient won’t fade away easily.」
「Remember this. You didn’t gain the power to kill a god. You gained the ‘qualification’ to bring a god to death.」

It wasn’t the power to kill a god. It was qualification. What did qualification even mean? He didn’t know. He had to know.
He had to learn it. Only then could he teach death to the being before him.

“Death at an assassin’s hand…… is sickening.”

Even then, the Undying in the chair muttered.

“Like a rat bastard like you.”
“!”

When he realized it, it was no longer just a chair.
It was a golden throne.

“My empire too fell to a rat bastard like you.”

The man sat on that throne. He was no longer the shabby man from before.

“My name is Xerxes, King of Kings.”

A Golden King.

“Look upon my works, you mighty, and despair!”

When he realized it, the bone wings behind him were turning gold. They were unfolding a scene.
An empire spread beyond the throne. It was an old glory that should have slept in his memory, the mightiest and greatest.

A memory from before the Undying had repeated uncountable deaths. Before he understood the curse. Back when he devoted that power entirely to deeds and glory as an emperor.

Kugugugu!
Before he knew it, it wasn’t the musty basement floor anymore. He was before a throne adorned with dazzling marble, obsidian, and golden ornamentation.

“Protect me.”

When he realized it, soldiers were surrounding the area. They weren’t mere rabble. They were the strongest soldiers, meant to protect the emperor at the empire’s heart, at the emperor’s throne.

“Kill my enemies.”

[Long ago, there was another empire said to have brought a new age atop the ruins after the first ancient civilization fell…….]

Then the narrator’s voice rang out.

[Fearing the elite soldiers who protected that empire’s emperor, the terrifying unit said to not die even when killed, people called them this.
Immortals─.]

“!”

The Undying unfolded a memory of old glory. Past scenery layered over it, surrounding Solomon.

Armor overlaid in gold from head to toe, flaunting that they were the emperor’s elite. Even the helms and masks covering their faces were no exception.

“……!”

He realized it. This wasn’t gold decoration and armor worn for show.
It was like molten gold from a raging furnace had been poured straight onto bodies. The armor clung to skin, hardened grotesquely, and fused. When limbs moved, it wasn’t metal scraping. It was bones and flesh inside the gold cracking, stinking of rot.
The helm covering the face was the same. No, it wasn’t even a helm.

Skin rotted and melted until wriggling maggots dropped from beneath it. Where the mouth should have been, molten metal had been poured and sewn shut with golden thread. The stench of decay stabbed at his nose.

Even then, two dark eyes watched this way. The human emotion that should have been there was gone.
Those very Immortals surged toward Solomon, black cloaks whipping over shining golden armor.

“Kill that assassin who dares target me.”

No voice answered the command. Their lips, meant to speak, were sewn shut. They had been given only one duty, to protect the emperor. For that, ‘communication’ was unnecessary.
So they charged at the one the emperor declared an enemy.

Even so, their movements never drifted apart. They moved as one organism, as one organization. Their weapons formed a forest of golden spears and pressed Solomon. While the spears pinned him, Immortals acting as swordsmen guarded the gaps in the long-spear formation.

‘……They’re strong.’

Movement unfolded in extreme restraint. Just because they were ancient soldiers didn’t mean they were inferior to the strong of this era.
And the finishing touch was elsewhere.

Behind the golden spear forest, inside the Immortals’ shadow. One shadow was hiding on purpose, silent amid violence and golden radiance. It moved.

Ddarang.
A bell rang. A clear, fine bell tone.

‘!’

A silence spell that allowed no sound. Like their mouths sewn shut with thread, Solomon’s spellcasting was blocked by that bell tone too.

“There is nowhere to run, assassin. Do you dare break through the encirclement of these Immortals who protect me, and drive your blade into me?”

Like that, the Immortals surrounded Solomon. The emperor on the throne looked down at him calmly.

“It’s over.”

He mocked Solomon from overwhelming advantage, seated on the golden throne that symbolized the old empire’s glory. The height of arrogance. He never doubted defeat. He never doubted downfall.

‘Fuck.’

It was truly desperate. Solomon’s head spun. With golden despair and a spear forest blocking him from all sides, how was he supposed to move? He had no intention of collapsing. Even now, his eyes steadily caught a ‘gap’ in the shield that felt impossible to pierce.

So along that path, the human assassin moved.

Between uncountable golden spear tips, he read the trajectory exactly. Only one correct answer existed there.

Ridiculously, he couldn’t use magic. So the only thing Solomon could trust was his body. As an assassin, and as a combatant who fought more squarely than anyone, he had to break through the Immortals’ wall.

Spear tips thrust in. He knocked them aside with the Ghost Whale Bone Blade in his hand. The moment he deflected them, spear shafts slammed in. He couldn’t block those with a weapon. He had to twist his body and evade.

Shuuk!
A golden spear tip barely grazed Solomon’s cheek. A scrape opened. Blood sprayed. Wherever he looked, he saw soldiers screaming like prisoners trapped inside golden armor. Molten gold poured over them like boiling metal. Flesh rotted. Mouths sewn shut so they couldn’t speak. Even so, they served only the emperor.
That wasn’t far from what an Immortal looked like at all.

He knocked aside the tip of a swordsman’s blade. With his other hand, he pulled the thread mechanism in his sleeve and drew a blade.
The 「Blazing」 Sun Ruby Blade.

Before the blade’s flames, the Immortals’ eyes wavered, if only for an instant. Those flames were enough to understand it. How many painful memories they had before fire. Fear in the subconscious they could not hide.

Fwooosh!
So Solomon spread those flames without holding back. He opened a path again. He burned the forest of golden spears blocking him. He vaulted their wall, evaded, and surged forward.

He didn’t need to deal with every single one of them. From the start, Solomon’s goal was only one thing.

Taat!
Before he knew it, Solomon kicked off the ground. He cleared the Immortals’ wall. He stepped on their faces, on their heads rotting with wriggling mold, and moved out of the encirclement. The distance closed.

“What are you doing! You can’t even stop one rat bastard!”

As the distance closed, the king on the golden throne panicked. Xerxes. The form he believed was the mightiest and greatest, across all his memories.

Solomon didn’t stop. Only one path was visible to his eyes.
Along that path, he closed the distance to the emperor before the golden throne. His blade tip drove down.

“—Remember death.”

Kwachik!
It was a blow that pierced the emperor’s heart.

“……!”

At first, the emperor’s expression hardened on the golden throne, as if bewildered. But the bewilderment was only an instant.

“Remember…… death.”

When he realized it, the emperor wore a bitter smile, as if there was nothing to be surprised about.

“My name is Xerxes, King of Kings.
Look upon my works, you mighty, and despair!”

At the end of that bitter smile, he shouted like an actor in exaggeration. With that cry, the scenery all around faded away like desert sand-wind.

“But beside it, nothing remained.”

In that endless sand field, the centuries-long flow of the empire’s glory declining compressed and ran past like a scene in an instant.

“Beside that worn-down, crumbling colossus, there is only an endlessly desolate, empty, lonely field of sand, spreading without end.”

At the end of that flow, a new wheel of history rolled. New kingdoms. Empires. Ambitious conquerors. And at the end of it…… a city was built atop the ruins, on a sand field where nothing remained.
—A city called Guild City.

“……”

When he realized it, Solomon was back in the usual basement. The man sat there too, shabby, with no trace of a golden throne or imperial dignity.

“Being an emperor of an empire, being a king of a kingdom, being a parvenu drowning in wealth, none of it could fill me. Not in the emptiness of centuries, of tens of centuries.”

At the end of every worldly glory, at the end of every wretched conclusion, the man could not die.

“Countless assassins came each time my life reached its peak. They came to end that role. One role ended. The next role began…… and now I’m tired of everything.”

In a voice that truly sounded exhausted.

“What did you come to end in me? Can you end it?”

As if he truly couldn’t understand.

“From me, who has fallen so far I have nothing left to lose, what can you take?”
“……”

Solomon didn’t answer right away. A brief silence. At the end of it, he readjusted his grip on the hilt.
Because now he could understand.

“Remember death.”
“I remember it to the point I’m sick of it.”

Solomon whispered low. The man let out a hollow laugh. He must have heard those words to the point of sickness.

“I’m not talking about your death.”

Solomon didn’t care.

“……?”

He was only watching.
He didn’t die even if you stabbed the heart and the neck. No matter what you did, the man came back. Without dying. Then Solomon recalled the moment he had driven his blade tip into the empire’s emperor.

Now he could understand. No—he could see it.

“Toward the word of god binding your heart.”

It wasn’t the man who didn’t die. It was the curse. The words the son of god left behind.

“Remember that you too will die in the end.”

The human assassin readjusted his grip on the hilt. The last Magus. The one who offered the gift of myrrh, and symbolized a god’s suffering, sacrifice, and death.
The blade tip drove down.

「I cannot rest now and must go on, but you shall go on until the last day.」

To kill the word of god (Logos).