Sword Ghost (4)

At Cheon Mira’s retort,
The Sword Ghost sent a cold look.

As if to say, ‘I’m disappointed…’.
Soon after, he gave an uncharacteristically bitter smile.

“If it were anyone else but you, noona… I thought you would’ve known already. In the end, even you did not understand me. I knew Han-seong hyung wouldn’t speak of it… but to think he didn’t tell you my true nature either…”

“What are you saying?”

“It means you fundamentally misunderstood the kind of person I am.”

Crack!

The Sword Ghost shattered the ice around his lower body in one motion.
At the same time, emitting a chilling noise,
he swung an oversized greatsword engraved with the number ‘4’.

Cheon Mira responded well despite the sudden attack.
In the resumed battle,
the Sword Ghost spoke.

“First, let me make this absolutely clear: I had not a shred of affection for that girl.”
“…!?”
“To be precise: by the time she was born and raised up to five years old — at that moment I lost my interest in her.”
“…You… lost interest?”
“That’s right.”

A sapling that inherited blood of my caliber…
reaching the stars in the sky would be natural,
I thought it might even surpass them.

Surpassing me…
I believed she might be the talent I had long searched and yearned for.

“Because I was exceptional.”

Because I was strong.
I was a genius acknowledged by Han-seong.
I had set foot in the realm of Heaven Beyond Heaven.
Naturally, I expected my daughter to be the same,
I had some expectation of that.

“But she was not. My daughter was inferior. At best a pitiful talent barely reaching A-rank.”

The Ghost’s hollow eyes, devoid of anything,
Pierced deeply into Cheon Mira’s heart.

“I can say with certainty: my daughter was garbage.”
“Y-you’re rating your own daughter, Hyang-rim… like that? You watched her efforts with your own eyes, even had her train under me?!”
“Noona. Speak correctly. I sent her because I didn’t want to see her.”
“…!”
“Let me finish. Therefore I only fulfilled the bare minimum responsibilities as a father and left her be.”

From the start, marriage itself,
Was something unnecessary to me — a tie I didn’t need.

To deliberately bind myself with shackles, wandering together,
And grow weaker.

The foolish choice to be eliminated by a pitiful thing called ‘affection.’
That hasn’t changed even now.

“It was only because Han-seong…”

My Hyung…

It was merely trying once his line ‘you’ll be happier with a family.’
My criteria for choosing a woman were nothing special.
Strength and talent.
Nothing else.

“Even now it’s hard to understand. The mother was quite exceptional too… so why such an inferior child…”
“The woman wasn’t the progenitor, she’s your wife!”
“That statement itself proves you never truly saw me.”

To me, whether wife or daughter…
they were nothing more than pieces of meat with mouths.
Talentless trash and vermin.
Inanimate objects not even considered of the same species.

“If Han-seong hyung had not raised me, not taken me in, not always looked at me with that pitying face, I wouldn’t have done this.”

I still remember it.
When the news of my marriage came,
The face of Han-seong who was so joyful.

“This was only the last responsibility I could take toward Han-seong, who raised me knowing my true nature.”
“…”

Cheon Mira gasped.
She staggered back a step.
Foolishly, she only now understood.

That she had severely misunderstood the person So Hang-woo,
She realized to her core that she had been completely wrong about him.

The Sword Ghost noticed that.
Only then did he smile softly, as if they could finally understand each other.

That smile was so pure that…
Cheon Mira involuntarily felt chills.
She realized how inhuman the nature of the one she called brother truly was.

“Y-you, you…!”
“In common terms, I would be close to what people call a sociopath.”

I know of morality and conscience.
I know the concepts of good and evil.
That murder is wrong,

I understand Han-seong hyung’s oft-repeated line that a man can become stronger when he fights for someone precious.

But what does that matter?

“It concerns something that has no relation to me…”
“…”
“Now for the rebuttal: why I didn’t take revenge the day my daughter died, why I didn’t kill that pimp who strutted around boasting himself as a clan master.”

Because it was the natural course.
No matter what, the daughter died because she was weak.
From the start, the very notion of revenge was absurd.

“Even if she had surrendered, didn’t she die from letting her guard down? What’s the problem with that?”
“…You lunatic…”
“The reason I went and killed that pimp five years later was simply because the weapon he brought from Gyeongbokgung’s <Trial> was a weapon I needed. It was awkward to reveal directly, so I used him as a tool.”

After finishing his words, the Ghost drew a sword he had never once used until now.

A long sword of ominous form.

A sword without any numbers or initials, a weapon that symbolized only the existence of the Sword Ghost.
He looked down at it and spoke.

“Because I coveted it.”

The Sword Ghost replied as if offering a final explanation.

“And what was it you said? That you felt paternal toward Moon Ha-yeon and helped her?”

Puhahaha!!!

The Sword Ghost laughed.
He laughed loudly, as if it were utterly ridiculous.
Cheon Mira, too, heard a genuine laugh she had never witnessed — no pretense.

“In all my life I never dreamed I’d hear such words.”

The Sword Ghost looked at Cheon Mira as if she were foolish.

“The reason I was beside Moon Ha-yeon, that girl, is because I saw a different kind of strength. I helped for that reason.”
“…A different… strength?”

The Ghost nodded.
He still remembered.

The day he first encountered Moon Ha-yeon.
On that night when torrential rain poured,
The moment he saw the young girl clawing to survive against men pursuing her…

“I thought there might be a possibility.”
“…Possibility?”
“Her talent was excellent, but not star-level. Even with bloodshed effort, at best she might barely reach S-rank.”

A being who couldn’t become a star,
how could she go beyond stars to the world of celestial bodies,
To that edge.
Could she enter the path of the supreme?

Therefore, ordinarily, Moon Ha-yeon too,
Was no different from a lump of meat to the Ghost.

“If it were just me alone.”
“…What?”
“The light I saw in her that day was her way.”

A tenacity that would stop at nothing to survive.
A determination to trample others if necessary to reach the goal.

Accumulated over at least several hundred years,
‘A filthy blood’ and the talent of the Moon clan — capable of blossoming into a greater and crueller flower of malice than anything else.

“I guarantee that girl will set foot in the world of celestial bodies. Like me…”

Even if it is not by her own power alone…
To surpass,
and to reach — that was what mattered.

For the Ghost, his primary goal was to reach that realm himself.
But it did not necessarily have to be him.

If anyone had the possibility to go,
he would, by any means, teach and raise them so they could reach it.
In that process, his own life or death meant nothing to him.

“Anyway, to return to the point… this is necessarily a difficult task. Harsher and more arduous than a flower that blooms by its own talent. So I subtly asked her, from time to time.”

If you stop now, you could live an ordinary life.

You are young. You could fall in love, meet good people.

See good things. Eat good food. Live well. Your hatred might calm a little.

“To others this might look like paternal love or pity, but to me it was a test.”
“…A test?”
“The moment she showed weakness… I planned to kill her. If a flower that must climb with all its strength turned its direction because of a low creature fallen on the ground, I intended to break its neck.”

But Moon Ha-yeon.
She did not show such behavior.

“Of course, to be honest, I don’t think she sensed and countered my intent. It was simply that the situation fit together exquisitely.”

But it doesn’t matter.
That girl will become great.
That is enough.
This is why I helped her.

As the Sword Ghost’s words ended,

at that moment.

Thud.

Cheon Mira realized it belatedly.
That the Sword Ghost’s blade had already been sheathed.
And at the same time, she felt the burning sensation of her abdomen being cut.

Cheon Mira spat blood from her mouth.
Because she had wrapped ice around her body, her waist wasn’t cleaved in two, but it was unquestionably a mortal wound.

The Sword Ghost stared at it blankly.
He drew the sword once more and sheathed it again.

“You are the only one to whom I’ve kindly explained my life like this. And there will be no other time like it.”

It was pleasant to have a conversation after such a long time.

Ku-gu-gu-gu!!!

A total of four.
No, an unidentifiable sword qi forming more than eight octagons.

The supreme sword qi commonly called the Ghost-Shadow Sword,
The sword qi imbued with a rule no one could properly counter,
Came rushing in with a grim momentum.

Cheon Mira, watching,
Felt instinctively that this was her end.