SSS-Class Sui**de Hunter - Chapter 44

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 44. The Name of the Demon Lord (1)
1
It had been a long journey.
I crossed through an eternity of time to reach this place.
[Skill penalty initiated.]
[Recreating the trauma of the enemy who killed you.]
It was time, at last, to speak of a certain nightmare.
The battle waged on the twelfth floor.
The moment I became a single droplet and was swept away by the rapids.
[Penalty severity: moderate.]
It was what I saw after the Demon Lord struck me down.
[The Asura Realm.]
A trauma.
The nightmare of the one called the master of nightmares.
[Penalty commencing.]
[Generating the trauma of Autumn Rain Monster’s Demon Lord.]
.
.
.
A village ablaze with raging fire.
Before long, I found myself standing alone in the midst of a sea of flames.
No.
—Burn it all!
Perhaps it was not I who stood alone.
At least I had a phantom retinue at my side.
The one who had truly fallen into a hellscape of fire stood beyond the inferno.
—Burn the Witch’s nest to ash!
Estelle.
The saint of the borderlands.
One who saved the broken people.
—Show no mercy. They are all cursed monsters!
—Don’t let a single one escape!
Estelle could not understand.
Words would not come.
Unable to comprehend, her mouth could only open and close uselessly.
Why?
How could humans burn humans?
The parents who had thanked her. The infants who had been given new lives by her hands. Every last child had been slaughtered.
—Such is the Lord’s will!
Innumerable soldiers bearing flags tore through the village’s palisade.
—By order of His Majesty the King!
Knights bearing their own heraldry brought their blades crashing down.
—The Emperor of the Great East, who guards the rising sun and dwells between earth and sea as protector of all—
—His Holiness the Pope declares that this heretic who dares call herself a saint—
—As commanded by the Forest Lord, spirits grant this arrow—
—With this Sacred Jewel shared by the Mermaid King, grant our staffs—
—To honor our ancient covenant, we Dragon Knights have come from the primordial Volcano! Now, sky-dragons! Breathe your fire upon these wretched things—
They proclaimed their allegiances and names aloud, yet Estelle could not discern them.
Who were they?
What gave them the right to burn humans?
—Aaahhh!
—Save me!
They were methodical. They encircled the village as one might hunt great prey. There was no escape. A family attempted to flee, but they were caught and hunted down.
There was only one place left to run: the village square.
Pierced by spears.
Driven by swords, struck by arrows,
bludgeoned by hammers, cursed by magic, burned by flames—the people pressed ever deeper into the square.
—Cough!
In the center of the village.
In the heart of the paradise she had created.
In the smoke-choked square, Estelle surveyed the destruction around her with measured calm.
Hold on just a little longer. Just a little more…
A father bent his back. Between his spine and the earth, a narrow gap opened. Through that gap, a small child hid. The father caught the sparks in his stead, swallowed the acrid smoke for them.
The father died first.
The child lived one minute longer than him.
Just a bit more…
An elderly couple embraced each other. Estelle wondered if they were bidding farewell to their companion’s final moments. But looking more carefully, that wasn’t it. Between them, a newborn had burrowed into the space.
Just a little more…
When the flames spread, the old couple screamed. But they didn’t let go. Their elbows burned and fused in place. Even as they turned to charred cinders, the elderly pair held fast. Not a farewell to one another, but an embrace to save even one small life.
The couple died first.
The newborn’s cries from the gap ceased one minute later.
…
One by one.
The coughing in the square fell silent.
The family who had run an orchard and become the Village’s wealthiest. The old man who went to the fields every dawn to work the soil. The old woman who, when autumn came, would gaze blankly at the grain fields and murmur, “The grain’s ripened yellow again.”
Why…?
There was no part of any villager left unmarred. Incurable disease dormant in the gut. Cancer eating through brain and spine. Eyes that could not see ahead. Feet that could not walk forward. The world held countless illnesses, and Estelle had been willing to consume them all.
More so than when she’d swallowed all those diseases.
How…?
Now her heart had turned utterly black.
Charred by the smoke.
Ablaze with the flames.
She parted her lips slowly.
…
Burnt char filled her mouth.
Estelle knew that her heart had darkened a little.
All through the night, the Village burned.
All through the night, Estelle burned with it.
Crunch!
Estelle scraped at the ash with her fingertips.
No one stopped her. Seeing the Village consumed by flame, the soldiers had drifted away without a second glance.
The remains of paradise, all that fire had left.
Lepandor…
There lay the corpse of a father.
Dazena…
Beneath the father, a child’s corpse.
Solape… Chou… Ugensache…
She dug.
Mobazaisan… Topo… Enna… Garchof…
With bare hands. With her fingertips.
Through the Village’s remains, all that was left of the remains. Through the ash where paradise had settled into dust. Her fingers blackened, her nails cracked and bled, the blood itself staining black—still she dug.
Estelle dug.
…
And opened her mouth to eat.
Human flesh.
Human bone.
If neither flesh nor bone remained, then ash.
…
Human meat no longer held any fragrance. She felt no appetite, no beauty in any of it. Only char. Only the lingering scent of what had burned. And yet Estelle did not rest. She consumed what had burned. She devoured it. Ravenously. No matter how grotesque.
Estelle’s lips blackened with filth.
Estelle’s teeth stained dark as pitch.
Wretched things…
Her esophagus was painted black, her stomach pooling with seepage. Blood became ichor, spreading through her body. But it wasn’t only blood. Something flowed from her eyes.
It was perhaps not tears.
If it were tears, why would it not be clear?
Wretched things…
Then it must be sewage.
Wastewater discarded by other humans, flowing and flowing, finally arriving at her.
With nowhere else to go, pooling instead in her heart.
Wretched things…
The sewage flowed black without ceasing.
—You.
It flowed through the Square.
—You, and you as well. You too are human.
It flowed through the Village.
—You were born human and came to know the beauty of life, and being human, you knew how to shed tears. So how. How could you.
It flowed through the wasteland.
—Call them monsters? Burn them as monsters? Was it truly not enough that they knew beauty and could weep? Did you feel no hesitation in calling them by that name, in setting them aflame?
It flowed through the desolate hills.
—And so you remained human still, while these—my children—must remain monsters forever? Was that your world.
Resentment flowed like rain.
—In that world, was it only you who could smile? Only you were permitted to be beautiful. Only you had the right to shed tears. Only you were human. So it seems that for you, one must prove oneself to be a person.
The heart echoes, shrieking.
—Then let it be you who proves it now.
Rain fell.
—Show me.
Rain fell.
—I curse you.
As the rain falls.
No village shall burn anymore, no distant frontier shall be wrapped in flames.
My children. My blood. The color stolen from my heart.
My blood has already lost its hue and flows now as nothing but sewage of ash, yet the rain that falls upon this world turns red, bearing witness in place of my blood.
—Perish in your malice.
Rain fell.
Rain.
—You,
Rain.
Rain fell.
—You made me this way.
It continues.
—And so I made you this way.
Rain.
Rain falling……
—Gongja.
A flicker.
—Wake up.
A voice.
—This is not your hell.
At the quiet voice, I barely managed to open my eyes.
[Trauma Reenactment Complete.]
[Confirmed that the subject’s sense of self remains intact.]
[Penalty terminated.]
* * *
One Blade.
I held but a single sword.
Two Severance.
There remained only what I had to cut in this world.
—Gongja!
A flicker.
—Now!
I looked ahead.
No.
The sight before me revealed itself to me.
—My mind is empty!
A moment’s span drifting like an eternity.
In the instant I crossed, before my eyes stood a figure cloaked entirely in black.
Sewage flowed ceaselessly from his form.
Water, even when cut, remains water—there was much yet to sever.
One Blade Two Severance.
I cut what needed to be cut.
—Kraaaaaahhh!
As he was carved open, the black king spilled sewage.
Perhaps it wasn’t sewage at all.
If it were sewage, why would it shine so red?
Blood.
Scarlet drops of blood poured from the Demon Lord’s body.
—Ugh… Kriek……!
The Demon Lord staggered backward. One step. Two steps. By the third footfall, his right arm ceased its dark flow.
Black pools still gathered in the prints of his feet, but with each step—from one to two, from two to three—the puddles grew smaller, contracting like a wound drawn tight.
Before long.
—Crgh, wheeze… uuugh…….
The darkness was peeling away from the Demon Lord’s frame.
Thud. Drip.
When no more of that black filth could flow, crimson took its place.
For life’s true color had always been this red.
[The Demon Lord of Autumn Rain’s form grows indistinct.]
The being that had commanded absolute dominion was no more.
—No… no, I can’t… Ugh……!
The Demon Lord wrapped his right hand around his left arm, trying to seal the wound as blood continued to seep. Each crimson drop that escaped seemed an unbearable loss—like a man desperately trying to recapture water he’d already spilled, he pressed against the wound with raw desperation.
—My children… not like this… not with their spite, their resentment…….
“Withdraw.”
I spoke, my voice low and measured.
Where a sword severs flesh, a voice severs the soul.
The Demon Lord froze as though cut by my words alone.
“Fall back to the twentieth floor. You cannot best me—you know this. Return to your seat of power, to your final fortress. Go quietly.”
The World Map said it all plainly enough.
Blue territory. Humanity’s dominion had reclaimed the continent once more. Past the Middle Mountain Range. Through the ravine called the Shield of the Goddess. The temple watched over by the one-eyed giant. The forest where fairies danced. The waterfall where mermaids played. Volcanoes whose craters now held crystalline lakes instead of lava……. From the vast plains to the farthest reaches, not a corner remained that was not blue.
The red territory, by contrast.
“Now return to your beginning.”
One point.
Merely a single, solitary point.
Even the fiercest blaze that had scorched entire fields inevitably dwindles to one last ember and dies. Even the mightiest flood that had surged to the very vault of heaven eventually reduces to a single drop of water and ceases.
Across the vast world map, only a faint red dot remained—like a firefly’s gleam.
There.
“That is your terminus, Demon Lord.”
The Demon Lord ground his teeth.
—You… you bastard…….
The Demon Lord raised his head. His right arm had stopped bleeding, but crimson still flowed. Half his body remained charred black. His face, too—only those crimson eyes burned with an eerie light. From that ash-darkened visage, he glared at me with pure malice.
“Hmph.”
Geomseong gripped his sword hilt in silence.
“I’ll leave the final blow to you.”
The Witch commanded her six mirrors with an easy gesture.
—…….
No matter where he looked, there was no possibility of turning the tide. Not one opening. Having glimpsed the Demon Lord’s trauma, the situation felt exactly like a village ringed by soldiers, hemmed in on all sides.
A barrier of human bodies with no gap to slip through.
—Kriek!
For the Demon Lord, flight was the only answer. Yet he hesitated, as if unable to choose—because he too knew that retreat was no true solution.
It was the same.
Just as fleeing the flames into the Square had bought them only one more minute of life, retreating here to the twentieth floor would merely postpone defeat by a breath or two.
—Damn it…… Damn it!
Blood dripped from the Demon Lord’s mouth.
[The Demon Lord of Autumn Rain has resolved to withdraw.]
[The Demon Lord of Autumn Rain retreats to the twentieth floor!]
Yes.
To flee in the knowledge that flames await—that is the essence of humanity.
With each step backward, the Demon Lord drew closer to being human.
[Confirmed: The Demon Lord has withdrawn.]
[History Revision enacted.]
[The 19th Floor Stage is now reformed.]
The world was wrapped once more in a sphere of light.
Once I confirmed the Demon Lord had vanished, I turned to face the others.
“Geomseong.”
“Yes.”
“Heukyong-ju.”
“Understood.”
“I apologize. I wish to clear the 20th Floor alone.”
I lowered my head.
“Thank you for helping me this far. But I want to settle things with that Demon Lord myself. Please let me go on alone.”
……
The Witch gave a slight shrug.
“Fine. I’m okay with it. You’ve been the biggest contributor in getting us this far anyway… and besides, I agreed to let you call the shots for five days. Since I went ahead and broke that agreement to help you, this time I’ll really stay put.”
“Hmm.”
Geomseong sheathed his blade.
“By the time today ends, we’ll already be at day five. Once you’ve cleared the 20th Floor, we’ll meet separately afterward. There’s much we need to discuss between us.”
“Yes, I understand.”
I bowed again.
“Thank you.”
And I set off.
“Teleport.”
The twentieth stage.
[Welcome, Demon Lord.]
The Demon Lord.
The village where Estelle was born.
SSS-Ranked Hunter Who Thrives by Dying (Serialized)
Author │ Shin Noah
Publisher │ Kim Ju-hyung
Published by │ J Plus Media Co., Ltd.
Marketing │ Han Jae-hyuk
Address │ 204, 288 Digital-ro, Guro-gu, Seoul (Guro-dong, Daelung Post Tower 1st)
Email │ [email protected]
Website │ www.jayplemedia.com
© Shin Noah 2019
※ This work is published by J Plus Media Co., Ltd. in accordance with a contract with the copyright holder. The content may not be used in any form or by any means without permission from the publisher and author.
Violation of this may result in criminal and civil legal liability.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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