The man looked around.
What wonderful weather. Only a little over twenty hours ago, the sea had been bucking like mad. Now it was calm, and gulls flew in flocks across the clear sky.
Beautiful. Is this nature?
The place where the man had lived was nothing like this. That distant, distant place was always dim and dark as night, with a terrible stench hanging in the air. Of course, for personal reasons, he had never smelled a stench in his life, but there was no doubt the place had reeked.
In any case, the man liked this world.
He could see beautiful scenery he had never seen before. Better yet, he was with some pretty decent people.
“…”
On second thought, he should probably exclude one of them.
No, two.
The man—the Skeleton King—remembered a conversation from a few hours earlier.
“Anything?”
“Huh?”
“You said you’d do anything, right?”
“Huh?”
“My goodness. Such a noble spirit of sacrifice. As battalion commander, I am genuinely moved.”
“Spirit of sacrifice? What are you talking about?”
“Shh. Enough. I know. I know how you feel, so stop pretending.”
Holy shit…?
Something felt off.
Things were taking a strange turn.
He looked desperately to the other human for help, but the one he had thought was at least somewhat sane turned out to be in on it too.
“Hey, handsome and intelligent human…”
“Please don’t speak to me. I’m too overcome to answer right now.”
“You son of a bitch…”
“I see you in a new light, Mr. King. Sacrificing yourself for the greater good…”
“I never said I’d sacrifice myself, so why do you keep saying that…?”
“We will never forget your sacrifice. You are a true hero.”
“Stop! Why are you coming closer?”
By the time he realized this was more than strange—that he was in danger—it was too late.
Jin Taekyung had blocked the door and was creeping toward him with a bundle of rope.
“I’ll talk to you carefully. I’ll try to find my courage.”
“Don’t sing some weird song! Put down the rope!”
“Starting today, I want to make you my bait.”
“What song has lyrics like that? Don’t rewrite it!”
“Team Leader Choi, why aren’t you grabbing him? Am I the only bad guy here?”
“Ah, my apologies. I was wiping away my tears.”
“Get the hell away from me!”
Splash! Rattle!
A wave rolled in from far away and struck the stern of the little motorboat.
The seawater splashed refreshingly across his face, jolting the Skeleton King out of his thoughts. He muttered,
“…Damn it.”
Naturally, resisting had been pointless.
The humans he had trusted had boxed him in from the front and rear, while Jin Taekyung—the root of all evil—made a solemn declaration like a judge delivering a verdict.
“Don’t make a fuss. Become bait quietly, and there won’t be a boneshed.”
“Isn’t it supposed to be bloodshed?”
“He doesn’t have any blood.”
“Oh.”
“So, what’ll it be?”
What else could he do?
The die had already been cast, and the hustlers had loaded it.
Realizing that he had fallen into the trap before Leviathan, the Skeleton King chose to avoid a boneshed and obediently boarded the little boat.
Along with the two S-rank Magic Gems the Japanese government had provided.
“Get rid of these cumbersome things. The monster will drool over me even without them.”
“No, no. Do you eat samgyeopsal1 without ssamjang2 and scallion salad?”
“…Is it already decided that Leviathan’s going to eat me?”
“Don’t worry. We’ll save you when it’s time to dip you in the ssamjang2.”
“What if it swallows me in one bite?”
“Wow. That would be delicious.”
“…You are going to save me, right?”
“I suddenly feel like having some soju.3 Don’t you, Team Leader Choi?”
“I prefer wine, but soju3 definitely goes with samgyeopsal.1”
“You’re definitely going to save me… right?”
That was the last thing he heard.
The little boat, carrying one S-rank monster and two S-rank Magic Gems, set off before he received an answer. Following GPS coordinates entered beforehand, it began circling near an uninhabited island several hundred kilometers4 away.
It had been circling for an hour now, waiting for the big one hiding somewhere in the deep sea to take the bait.
“You damn humans.”
The Skeleton King gazed up at the blue sky and felt his nonexistent heart pounding.
What if the monster really shows up?
He knew exactly how great the difference in strength was between him and Leviathan.
Unlike his former self, who had not even possessed reason, Leviathan had been born a predator, endowed with immense magical power from the start. They were fundamentally different.
Among the S-rank monsters known in the Demon Realm as the “Seventy-Two Legion Commanders,” Leviathan had ranked in the top ten.
Though its strength had waned since those days, the fear lodged in the Skeleton King’s heart would not go away so easily.
Don’t come. Don’t come. Please don’t come…
The Skeleton King liked this world.
Unlike him, already dead, nature was full of life. Cities were filled with dazzling, wondrous things, and there were human women of breathtaking beauty.
The way certain humans behaved occasionally disgusted him, but most were decent enough. He was even growing used to the word friend, which had seemed so strange at first.
But he had no desire to become nourishment for Leviathan.
He nearly cried at the thought of himself turned into a hearty samgyeopsal1 set meal.
You damn humans, please let me live too!
The fact that he could not even shout for fear of attracting Leviathan made him more miserable still. But it was far too late to turn back.
The Skeleton King touched the ssamjang2 and scallion salad hanging around his neck.
No—the two S-rank Magic Gems.
He glared at the sea.
Right. You only die once, not twice.
Repeating that phrase humans liked to use, he felt courage well up from somewhere inside him.
Besides, unlike humans, he really had died before. He had nothing left but bones, so perhaps he could survive being chewed a few times. Getting stuck between Leviathan’s teeth would be even better.
“Come on, you monster! I’ll take you on!”
And at the very moment the Skeleton King let out that brave shout—
Zzzzt. Splat.
Something fell from the sky onto his head and shoulder.
The Skeleton King rubbed the sticky, stark-white stuff with a bewildered look, then scowled.
Shit.
Warm bird shit.
“I ought to pluck every last feather off those bastards.”
Growling under his breath, the Skeleton King looked up.
As expected, a flock of gulls had been circling above him for some time. They had apparently decided that humans were free cafeterias and had been following the little boat.
More precisely, they were scattering shit and piss as they flew away toward some distant point.
“They’ve got a damn good sense for—”
The Skeleton King broke off. His pupils trembled.
His eyes widened at the sight of birds flying in from the opposite direction, blackening the sky.
Birds? All of those?
While he stared with his mouth hanging open, thousands—perhaps tens of thousands—of birds, so many species mixed together that even an ornithologist would have struggled to tell them apart, flew over his head, following the gulls into the distance.
No.
That wasn’t it.
They were…
Fleeing.
As the word flashed through his mind, the calm sea began to heave.
Rrrrrumble!
A vibration rose from deep beneath the sea.
And then—
Whoooosh!
A triangular wave surged upward as if to swallow the world, a massive shadow undulating within it.
“GRAAAAAAAH!”
A savage roar shook the Philippine Sea.
The moment the mythical monster, more than three hundred meters5 long, opened its jaws toward the feast laid out on the tiny boat—
“It’s been twenty-three hours, you motherfucker.”
Along with the unexpected voice of one man, a fierce flame shot forward, evaporating the moisture in its path.
Crunch!
There is a martial art in Murim called the Turtle Breath Technique.
Strictly speaking, it is more of a method than a martial art. It suppresses breathing and heartbeat as much as possible, and even lowers body temperature.
In other words, it is a strange way of hiding all signs of life for a while. It also requires considerable internal energy and martial prowess, so few people in Murim learn it.
If you knew anything about the strange creatures called martial artists, that was hardly surprising.
Murim was full of show-offs who shouted the names of their forms even while fighting for their lives. You expected them to play dead?
Roll on the ground in that world, and people would humiliate you by claiming you had achieved Great Completion in Narye tagon.6 Naturally, the people willing to learn the Turtle Breath Technique were few.
Members of the unorthodox faction.
Wandering martial artists.
And…
Assassins.
Unlike those first two groups, assassins were so rare you could go your whole life without seeing one.
An assassin could brush right past you without your realizing what they were. And if you did realize the person in front of you was an assassin, you were already pretty damn screwed.
Still, meeting one could sometimes be useful.
Especially when that assassin was known as the Slaughter Saint.
“I’m not sure what to teach you. But I can’t exactly teach the Fire King’s successor something like the Turtle Breath Technique…”
“Wow, the Turtle Breath Technique!”
“…?”
“Teach me! I want to live!”
“…Aren’t you from the orthodox faction?”
“Do orthodox martial artists not die even when they get stabbed?”
“No, but you should be developing your martial arts—”
“Turtle Breath Technique! Turtle Breath Technique! Survival! Taekyung Grylls!”7
“All right, just calm down. And stop spouting that strange nonsense.”
In short, I was lucky.
The living legend of the assassin world had teaching skills that could put even Daechi-dong’s top cram-school instructor to shame, and I was good at anything that involved using my body, so I absorbed his teachings like a sponge.
I had never dreamed I would use the Turtle Breath Technique in the modern world before using it in Murim. But it certainly worked.
Crunch!
A spear wreathed in blue-white flames was sucked into the dark monster’s maw.
No—it shattered the teeth that had already grown back and buried itself in the roof of its mouth.
“GRAAAAAAAH!”
Crack-crack-crack!
The monster thrashed with a roar, crushing the little motorboat like a dried stalk.
I grabbed the wide-eyed Skeleton King by the back of his neck, kicked off the boat as it began to sink, and shot upward.
Boom!
Fragments burst behind me and grazed my shoulder. A fierce wind whipped over me.
I stepped onto an invisible staircase and stopped in midair.
Grrrrr.
Ragged breathing. The pupils of Leviathan’s huge, crocodile-like eyes narrowed into long vertical slits.
“You. How could you…”
“Ah, that? It’s a long story.”
I grinned.
“And I’m not telling you.”
Inventory open. Summon.
Along with the thought that accompanied the words, I hurled the spear in my hand.
Whoooooom!
Footnotes
-
Ssamjang is a savory Korean dipping paste commonly served with grilled meat. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
-
Each 100 kilometers is about 62 miles. ↩
-
Three hundred meters is about 980 feet. ↩
-
Narye tagon is a martial-arts expression comparing an evasive roll to a lazy donkey rolling on the ground. ↩
-
“Taekyung Grylls” alludes to Bear Grylls, a television presenter known for survival programs. ↩
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