Part 25 - Madness
Yeon Sang-hyeon drew in a deep breath.
The stench unique to back alleys—the reek of piss and shit, the smell of rot, mildew, sewer stink rising from the drains, and the odor of melted intestines and boiling blood—felt refreshing.
Each time his heart beat lightly, the demonic qi of The Ruler Of Darkness raced through every blood vessel and meridian in his body.
That qi—warping reality, corroding it—stirred his upper dantian into chaos and surged all the way into his mind.
Everything around him came into view. Everything felt as though it could be grasped in his hand.
It felt like there was nothing impossible.
It was omnipotence—and at the same time, madness.
Without realizing it, a rough beast-sound rumbled up from deep in his throat.
Yeon Sang-hyeon—the demon of The Ruler Of Darkness—stared at the prey lined up along the corridor.
"...The banquet begins."
A voice made of harsh metallic noise echoed down the hall.
"K-Kill him!"
With someone's shout, the Black Bone Sect's men jerked as if in a fit and rushed in with their weapons raised.
"Come!"
Yeon Sang-hyeon bared his teeth and grinned.
The man charging first had a face twisted in terror—half desperate resignation.
The sword he swung was so cheap it hardly deserved to be called a sword at all.
Even the filthy tassels he'd hung from the end of the hilt to look stylish—each ragged strand fluttering—were visible with perfect clarity.
But there was no need to dodge. No reason.
Yeon Sang-hyeon stood still and took the strike with his head.
With a sharp clash of metal on metal, sparks burst.
The sword—full of impurities, not even properly tempered—snapped and flew away.
The broken edge lodged into the ceiling.
It didn't even itch.
Before the hilt the man had dropped from shock could hit the floor, Yeon Sang-hyeon brought his palm down on the man's skull.
With a deafening boom, the skull exploded in the direction of the blow.
Like a whip cracking, brain matter, blood, and shards of bone sprayed across the ground.
Only then did the hilt clatter to the floor.
The headless body swayed, turned half around, and collapsed as if leaning against the corridor wall.
At the sight, Yeon Sang-hyeon raised his hands and applauded.
A banquet wasn't complete without dancing, was it?
"Uaaaaah!"
The next man burst forward with an axe.
Yeon Sang-hyeon reached out with both hands, seized the man's arms, and yanked them off.
While the man screamed himself hoarse, Yeon Sang-hyeon tossed the torn arms onto the floor.
"M-My aaarms...!"
After watching that grotesque dance for a moment, Yeon Sang-hyeon slowly tore the man's jaws open.
In that gap, two more rushed him—only for their waists to split apart and be flung away at the same time.
One who'd been shoved forward from behind, unable to stop, was caught by Yeon Sang-hyeon's gaping mouth and had his head bitten off and eaten.
A banquet needed food, too.
Even as Yeon Sang-hyeon spoke so leisurely, Swords flew at him and clubs crashed down—but none of it could harm him, and every time he moved his body once, the corridor simply gained more corpses missing pieces of themselves.
That filthy, reeking corridor was being reborn as the finest banquet hall—stuffed with song, dance, and food.
***
With a joyful smile, Yeon Sang-hyeon pierced yet another torso with a knife-hand strike.
Another life vanished.
But the Black Bone Sect wasn't just dying helplessly.
The instant Yeon Sang-hyeon punched through that body, a bluish Sword shot out from the opposite side.
It screamed toward him at terrifying speed.
"Hah...!"
With a low scoff, Yeon Sang-hyeon leaned back and avoided it.
That long sword—clean enough that not a drop of blood clung to it despite having just pierced a body—reflected a cold blue sheen off its smooth surface.
Violent qi churned along its edge, swelling as if it might spill over.
That was why Yeon Sang-hyeon had chosen to evade that slash.
Speed, technique, and a clearly high-grade long sword—at last, a skilled fighter who'd learned true martial arts had appeared.
The attack didn't end with a vicious thrust.
"Puppet."
With that quiet murmur, as if mocking the laws of physics, the thrust converted into a cleaving cut.
The bluish Sword split the corpse as though it were tofu, then came down at Yeon Sang-hyeon like a bolt of lightning.
Got him!
The long sword's owner was certain his strike would land.
This monster had managed to dodge the first flash—an attack from the blind spot—on beastlike instincts.
But leaning back to avoid it was an obvious mistake.
With his center of gravity shattered like that, there was no way he could evade the chained strikes produced by the wielder's secret technique, Puppet.
"...?!"
Yet the blow that had cleaved the corpse cut only empty air, carving a deep scar into the floor instead.
"An interesting technique."
Icy breath touched the man's ear.
If he'd been a greenhorn with less time "eating Sword", he would've frozen right there.
He didn't think. He didn't judge.
A body tempered by countless real battles moved on reflex and unleashed another technique.
Turning Wheel.
A secret art that fused retrieval and attack into one.
Toward the direction that breath had come from, the long Sword snapped up as if fired—and he didn't stop there, pouring out dozens of chained strikes in a single breath.
"HRAAAH...!"
It was as if the Sword had multiplied into dozens, shredding the very space apart.
This time, the monster didn't dodge. It began intercepting those dozens of strikes.
Each time long claws formed from black qi collided with the saber's body, sparks sprayed in every direction with an ear-splitting roar.
"Huff... huff!"
When the chain finally ended, he sucked in the breath he'd been holding.
It was bad enough that his inner power had been heavily drained in just a few exchanges—but worse was that his breathing had grown ragged from forcing technique after technique together, and the flow of his internal energy had collapsed.
...That damned monster bastard.
But the biggest problem was something else.
"Already finished?"
His entire body had been carved to pieces by those claws—he was bathing in his own blood—yet the monster in the white mask didn't have a single torn thread, not even a nick.
"I was just starting to get excited. What a shame."
The monster's rough voice scraped his ear.
"...F**k off!"
He bet everything on this next strike.
What little inner power he had left, what little focus remained—he poured it all in.
Of course, given what the monster had shown so far, this final blow would surely be stopped with absurd ease.
But...!
At the same time, the corridors on both sides of the monster shattered as the remaining two martial artists who'd been waiting sprang out and launched their attacks.
A perfect ambush—timed for the exact instant the monster would be most off guard.
It worked...?!
But what he saw in the next moment was nothing like what he'd hoped.
His saber body was caught between the monster's teeth and crushed to pieces, and the two-pronged ambush was also stopped—effortlessly—by the monster's two hands.
The monster spat out fragments of metal.
"Was that your best?"
In that instant, he understood.
No matter what they did, the "chance" of hunting this monster had never existed from the beginning.
The monster was simply playing with them before eating them.
"Uaaaah!"
In his vision, the two—having abandoned their weapons while held in the monster's brute grip—charged in anyway, one with a backup weapon, the other empty-handed.
Something flashed. A series of thunderous impacts followed.
Only then did he realize his internal energy had run completely dry.
A mist of blood scattered. Jets of blood erupted. The noise continued for a while.
He forced his remaining strength to rush the monster again, but this was never an opponent to charge without internal energy.
He lost consciousness for a moment with a casual flick of the monster's hand—and when he woke, it was to a horrible screaming.
"K-KKAAAAH!"
The monster, with its back turned to him, was tearing into a martial artist and eating him alive.
The corridor filled with the sounds of flesh ripping, bones snapping, and screams.
Possessed by helplessness and fear, he could only wait for his turn.
He cried. He begged.
But his fate had already been decided.
***
"Crazy monster bastard!"
Having withdrawn his demonic qi, Yeon Sang-hyeon asked the last remaining boss of the hideout:
"You're calling me a crazy monster?"
The boss—both knees completely shattered—shrieked at Yeon Sang-hyeon through clenched teeth.
"Bullsh*t. Then you're the crazy monster bastard, aren't you? What, you think you're some great master or something?!"
Yeon Sang-hyeon slowly looked around.
The place he'd finally reached was a slaughterhouse built in an underground space.
Entrails gathered in one spot were boiling in a huge cauldron, and even more innards were piled up, waiting their turn.
On the other side, it seemed deboning work had been underway—bones and meat were strewn about, and in a corner an enormous heap of bones was stacked like a mountain.
Beyond that, large cuts of meat hung from hooks in a long line, waiting.
And finally, where Yeon Sang-hyeon stood was the area where they had been draining the blood from the meat.
The floor had become a wide pool of dark red blood, running along grooves into the sewers.
And that blood was flowing down from "human corpses" hanging upside down.
Yeon Sang-hyeon looked at the corpse closest to him.
A woman so stripped it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say only bones remained.
The only strange thing was that, for some reason, her belly had been split open.
Yeon Sang-hyeon gently closed the eyes of the corpse, which still stared wide, and asked the boss again:
"...You think I'm crazy?"
Clutching his ruined lower body, the underground human-meat factory's man in charge groaned and snapped back.
"Stupid bastard! This is all just business!"
"..."
For a moment, Yeon Sang-hyeon forgot how to speak.
Then he picked up a bowl from the man's desk.
He must've been eating right up until it all went wrong—the bowl and its contents were still warm.
Yeon Sang-hyeon fished out a single chunk of meat.
Steam curled up from a wrist—clearly a fetus's, judging by the size.
It answered the question of why the woman's belly had been split open.
"Just business?"
The man in charge shouted like a seizure.
"You crazy bastard! What's business?! Why do people do business?! It's all to make a living—!"
Yeon Sang-hyeon vanished in an instant and grabbed the man's head, smashing it into the wall.
"Kkuaaah...!"
Yeon Sang-hyeon let out a hollow laugh as he slowly rubbed the man's head against the wall, smearing it as if spreading paste.
When he killed people and ate them, that was madness—but when they killed people, butchered them, sold them, and ate them, that was business.
They had made killing, slaughtering, selling off, and devouring people their karma—their living—and were "working hard" to survive a harsh reality!
Yeon Sang-hyeon hung the corpse—its head half-ground away—upside down on an empty hook.
Blood poured from the mangled skull and splattered onto the floor.
It felt like too quick a death, but Yeon Sang-hyeon had his reasons.
Somewhere on this underground level, there would surely be cages where the living were kept—fresh meat for later.
He had to find them.
As he walked, he asked himself a question.
Was the mad one me—or was it this world?
The Ruler Of Darkness — Volume 2