Chapter 25

Madness 

Yeon Sang-hyeon drew in a deep breath.

The unique stench of the back alley—urine and feces, something rotting, mildew, the smell rising from the sewer, and the scent of rusted entrails and half-boiled blood—felt refreshing.

Each time his heart beat lightly, the demonic energy of The Ruler Of Darkness raced through every blood vessel and meridian in his body.

The demonic energy that distorted and eroded reality stirred his upper dantian and surged all the way into his mind.

Everything around him came into his sight, and it felt as though everything was within his grasp.

It felt as though there was nothing impossible.

It was a sense of omnipotence.

And at the same time, it was madness.

Before he realized it, a rough, beastly growl rumbled out from deep in his throat.

Yeon Sang-hyeon, the demon of The Ruler Of Darkness, looked at the prey lined up along the long northern passage.

“…The banquet begins.”

His voice, made of a rough metallic sound, echoed through the northern passage.

“K-kill him!”

With someone’s shout, the members of the Skeleton Gang spasmodically raised their weapons and began charging.

“Come!”

Yeon Sang-hyeon bared his teeth and laughed.

The face of the man rushing at the very front was filled with fear, and he had thrown himself into despair.

The blade he swung was such a shabby, cheap thing that it was difficult even to call it a saber.

Even the strands of filthy tassel tied to the end of its hilt in an attempt to make it look stylish were clearly visible as they fluttered.

But there was neither need nor reason to dodge.

Yeon Sang-hyeon stood still and received the blow with his head.

With a sharp metallic sound, like iron striking iron, sparks flew.

The saber, full of impurities and not even properly tempered, snapped and flew away.

The broken blade lodged itself in the ceiling.

It did not even itch.

Before the hilt the man had dropped from the impact could even fall to the floor, Yeon Sang-hyeon brought his palm down on the man’s head.

With an explosion that made the ears ring, the man’s head burst in the direction of the blow.

Like a whip brought down with tremendous force, the man’s brain matter, blood, and bone fragments spilled onto the floor.

Only then did the bladeless hilt hit the ground.

The headless torso staggered sideways, spun half a turn, and then collapsed as though leaning against the corridor wall.

At the sight, Yeon Sang-hyeon raised his hands and clapped.

After all, what was a banquet without dancing?

“Uwaaaah!”

The next man rushed in with an axe.

Yeon Sang-hyeon spread both hands and tore out both of the man’s arms.

While the man screamed at the top of his lungs, Yeon Sang-hyeon tossed the arms he was holding onto the floor.

“My aaaaaarms…!”

After watching that grotesque dance for a moment, Yeon Sang-hyeon slowly tore the man’s mouth apart.

Two more men rushed at him in the meantime, but their waists were torn apart at the same time and sent flying.

The one who had been shoved forward because those behind him kept pushing was seized by Yeon Sang-hyeon, who opened his mouth wide, and had his head chewed off.

After all, food was another thing a banquet could not go without.

Even as Yeon Sang-hyeon leisurely spoke in that manner, blades came flying and axes came crashing down.

But none of them inflicted even the slightest injury, and every time Yeon Sang-hyeon moved his body once, corpses missing parts of themselves increased in the corridor.

The filthy, foul-smelling corridor was being reborn as the finest banquet hall, filled with song, dance, and food.

***

With a joyful smile, Yeon Sang-hyeon pierced through yet another torso with a knife-hand strike.

Just like that, another life disappeared.

However, the Skeleton Gang was not simply being slaughtered one-sidedly.

The instant Yeon Sang-hyeon pierced through the torso, a blue blade shot out from the opposite side.

That blade rushed toward Yeon Sang-hyeon at terrifying speed.

“Ho…!”

With a low snort, Yeon Sang-hyeon bent his body backward and avoided the blade.

The long saber, which had pierced clean through the torso without a single drop of blood staining it, reflected a blue light from its smooth surface.

And violent energy surged along that blade as though it were overflowing.

That was also why Yeon Sang-hyeon had avoided that flash.

Speed, technique, and even a long saber that was clearly a high-quality weapon.

At last, an expert who had learned martial arts had appeared.

The attack did not end with that fierce thrust.

“Puppet.”

With a low murmur, as though ignoring the laws of physics, that thrust transformed into a slash.

Splitting apart the corpse as though cleaving tofu, the blue blade came crashing down toward Yeon Sang-hyeon like lightning.

‘I’ve got him!’

The owner of the long saber was certain his attack would succeed.

This monster had succeeded in avoiding the first flash that came in from his blind spot with beast-like senses.

But bending backward to dodge had clearly been a mistake.

With his center of gravity completely broken in that state, there was no way he could avoid the consecutive strike delivered through his unique technique, Puppet.

“…?!”

However, the strike that split the corpse only cut vainly through empty air and left a deep scar on the innocent floor.

“That was an interesting technique.”

The opponent’s icy breath brushed his ear.

Had he been a greenhorn with little experience of living by the blade, he would not have known what to do in that instant.

He did not think.

He did not judge.

His body, tempered through countless real battles, reflexively unleashed another technique.

Revolving Wheel.

Another unique technique that united retrieval and attack into one.

Toward the direction from which the breath had touched him, the blade was drawn back as though fired, and he did not stop there. In a single breath, he unleashed dozens of consecutive strikes.

“Hyo-ma-ap…!”

As though the blade had split into dozens, it tore the space to shreds.

This time, the monster did not avoid the attack. Instead, he began intercepting those dozens of consecutive strikes.

Every time the long claws made of black energy collided with his blade, sparks flew in all directions with a roar that seemed to tear the ears apart.

“Huff, huff!”

At last, the consecutive strikes ended, and at the same time, he roughly drew in the breath he had been holding.

The fact that his internal energy had been greatly depleted in just a few moves was a problem, but the bigger problem was that the flow of his inner power had collapsed because his breathing had grown ragged from linking together such unreasonable techniques.

…Damn monster bastard.

However, there was an even greater problem.

“Is it over already?”

He himself had been sliced all over by the opponent’s claws and was drenched in his own blood, but the monster in the white mask did not have so much as a cut on the hem of his clothes.

“It was just starting to get interesting. What a shame.”

The monster’s rough voice scraped against his ears.

“…Fuck you!”

He staked everything on this strike.

His remaining internal energy, his concentration—he poured it all in.

Of course, judging by the abilities the monster had shown so far, his final strike would undoubtedly be blocked in vain.

‘But…!’

At the same time, the northern passage on both sides of the monster shattered, and the remaining two martial artists who had been waiting unleashed their attacks.

It was a perfect ambush, aimed at the moment when the opponent was most off guard.

“We got him…?!”

However, what he saw the next moment was completely different from what he had expected.

His blade had been bitten between the monster’s teeth and shattered on the spot, while the surprise pincer attack was futilely stopped by the monster’s two hands.

The monster spat out the fragments of the blade.

“Is this the best you can do?”

At that moment, he realized.

No matter what they did, the probability of hunting this monster had never existed from the very beginning.

The monster was simply playing with them before devouring them.

“Uwaaaah!”

He saw the two men, whose weapons had been caught by the monster’s brute strength, abandon those weapons and attack with their secondary arms and bare hands.

Then something flashed, followed by a roar.

Only then did he realize that all of his inner power had been exhausted.

A spray of blood mist, surging fountains of blood, and screams followed for a time.

He, too, gathered what little stamina he had left and tried charging at the monster again, but this was absolutely not an opponent one could face without inner power.

After losing consciousness for a moment from a light gesture of the monster’s hand, he woke up because of a terrible scream.

“Kkeuaaaah!”

The monster had his back turned to him and was in the middle of tearing one of the martial artists apart alive and eating him.

The northern passage was filled with the sounds of flesh being torn, bones breaking, and screams.

Gripped by helplessness and terror, he had no choice but to wait for his turn.

He cursed.

He begged.

But his fate had already been decided.

***

“Crazy monster bastard!”

After withdrawing his demonic energy, Yeon Sang-hyeon asked the last remaining leader of the lair.

“You call me a crazy monster?”

The leader, whose knees had been completely shattered, shouted at Yeon Sang-hyeon in desperation.

“Bullshit! Then what else are you if not a crazy monster bastard? You think you’re some amazing master?!”

Yeon Sang-hyeon slowly looked around.

The place he had reached at the end was a slaughterhouse set up in an underground space.

Entrails gathered in one place were being boiled in a large cauldron, and even more entrails were piled up, waiting for their turn.

On the other side, bones and meat were scattered about, as though deboning work had been in full swing, and in the corner, an enormous pile of bones was stacked like a mountain.

Beyond that, large pieces of meat waiting their turn were hanging from hooks in a long line.

And finally, the place where Yeon Sang-hyeon stood was where the work of draining blood from the meat had been taking place.

The floor was soaked with blood, forming a large puddle, and it flowed along the gutter into the sewer.

And that blood was flowing from the “human corpses” hanging upside down.

Yeon Sang-hyeon looked at the corpse closest to him.

It was a woman who could hardly be said to have anything left but bones.

The peculiar thing was that, for some reason, the woman’s stomach had been split open.

Yeon Sang-hyeon closed the still-wide-open eyes of the corpse and asked the leader.

“…You say I’m crazy?”

The person in charge of the underground human-meat factory clutched his shattered lower body, groaning, and snapped back at Yeon Sang-hyeon.

“You stupid bastard! This is all just business!”

Yeon Sang-hyeon, momentarily at a loss for words, picked up a bowl from the person in charge’s desk.

It seemed he had been in the middle of eating before everything happened, because the bowl and its contents were still warm.

Yeon Sang-hyeon picked out a chunk of meat from inside it.

Judging by its size, it was clearly a fetus’s wrist, steam rising from it.

It was a detail that showed why the woman’s stomach had been split open.

“You call this just business?”

The person in charge shouted as though having a fit.

“You crazy bastard! What do you think business is?! Why do people do business?! It’s all something we do to make a living and put food on the—!”

In an instant, Yeon Sang-hyeon vanished and seized the person in charge’s head, slamming it into the wall.

“Kkeuaaaah…!”

Yeon Sang-hyeon gave a hollow laugh as he slowly rubbed the person in charge’s head across the wall as though smearing it there.

When he killed and ate people, it was madness.

When they killed, sold, and ate people, it was business.

These people had made killing, butchering, selling off, and eating people their occupation, and were diligently living through this harsh reality!

Yeon Sang-hyeon impaled the corpse of the person in charge, whose head had been half-ground away, upside down on an empty hook.

Blood poured down from the ground-away head and splattered onto the floor.

It seemed like too swift a death, but Yeon Sang-hyeon had his reasons.

Somewhere in the underground level, there had to be cages where they kept living people for fresh meat.

He had to find them.

As he moved his feet, he asked himself a question.

Was I the one who was mad,

or was it this world?