Chapter 50
#050
1.
I’d had a bad feeling all along.
No matter how hard I fought here,
this round would end right here.
This city, Necropolis, was a pit that sucked every shred of hope down into the abyss.
A city of death that buried even the faintest light in pitch-black darkness.
Iming’s exhaustion was obvious.
From what I’d seen at his side, Iming was the powerlifter, or strongman type.
Each individual blow might be powerful, but his endurance was terrible.
At Gangeumga, he’d unleashed the jiangshi and targeted that weakness directly, and he’d already piled up far too much fatigue.
On top of that, there was the final boss of Gangeumga, Honggon, Lee Cheng.
A Tier 3 mage. Even against a fully rested Iming, he’d have been able to gain the upper hand.
A Tier 2 who’d just spent half his brain cells playing 100-man hide-and-seek with jiangshi.
And a Tier 3 who’d just had a hot meal and come back from a sauna.
The result was obvious the moment the two of them clashed.
“Khehkh!!”
Exploding forward toward Lee Cheng, Iming’s body was hurled back.
Then he rolled miserably across the floor.
“Big bro!!!”
“Don’t come any closer! Cough…!”
Iming spat up dark, murky blood.
Even watching it, I still couldn’t believe it.
I knew Big Bro Iming had lost some steam, but if I’d been standing in front of that charge?
I’d be minced meat, with no chunks left.
And yet Lee Cheng had stopped that charge five times without even taking the hand out of either sleeve.
What kind of magic was that? Telekinesis? Psychokinesis?
It was like the charging Iming had been bounced off an invisible wall and sent flying.
“My, my. I like your stubbornness, Sect Leader Iming, but you’re still fighting like a brute. If you’d just stand still, I’d kill you painlessly.”
“Tch.”
“At this point, haven’t you completely run out of strength anyway? You don’t have a chance.”
Lee Cheng taunted him leisurely.
Spitting out blood, Iming got back up.
The way Lee Cheng talked was seriously weebish, but he wasn’t wrong.
The fight was already over.
The only reason Iming was still alive was one thing.
Because a mage’s corpse was valuable in and of itself, and the more intact it was, the more valuable it became.
What Lee Cheng was doing wasn’t fighting.
It was closer to a cautious butchering to obtain meat without a single bruise.
And Iming wasn’t unaware of that fact.
“Rowen.”
“Yes, Big Bro.”
“Sorry. I don’t think I can go on with you.”
A sheepish smile was etched onto his vicious face, the sort no one would ever call handsome.
“Rowen, one last question.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you still intend to keep treating me as your big brother?”
“Of course….”
I tried to answer lightly, but the words caught in my throat.
I had never once treated Iming as my big brother.
To me, Iming was a fool who’d tried to pull some dirty trick by turning Seres’s corpse into a collectible, only to get his head chopped off by Kisara’s slash.
He was also an idiot who cackled over stockings and high heels and let a spy in.
And what about his hobby?
The guy dressed up in women’s clothes and held tea parties among dolls made from corpses.
Even Hannibal would have gone, “What the hell is that?” and freaked out.
So.
The loyalty I’d shown in front of him hadn’t been loyalty at all.
I’d been waiting for the chance to stick a knife in the back of Iming’s head whenever I could.
And if the opportunity had come, I would have killed him without hesitation.
Even now, at this very moment, I was still hiding plenty from Iming.
Because this was the Necropolis-optimized lifestyle I’d learned.
The conduct that seemed, at a glance, to be trust and loyalty, frankly…
was just the meddling of an idiot who was easy to use.
Even so, in this very moment,
I placed my right fist into my left palm.
“Big Bro, you alone are my one and only big brother.”
“Good! Then this big brother will give his little brother one final lesson.”
Iming snorted, patted my shoulder lightly, and turned back toward Lee Cheng.
“Rowen! Do you know what the three talents of a mage are!”
At a time like this? I was confused, but still answered from behind him.
“The Three Talents? Isn’t it mind, qi, and body?”
And then.
—Hooosh
The wind blew.
A hot gust from somewhere made the blood-soaked hem of his changpao flap like a heavy banner.
—Hoooshhh
No, it wasn’t wind.
“Wrong! You don’t know a thing!”
The hot mana rising from Iming’s body made the air tremble.
“That’s the logic of trash who only spout cowardly sorcery!!! The dao I pursue is nothing so petty as that!!!”
Iming’s thick fingers pointed to the sky.
Then to the ground.
And finally to his own chest.
“My dao is heaven, earth, and man!!!!”
With a boisterous laugh,
—Gugugugugu
an invisible momentum surged up from Iming’s body.
The smog of Sector F surged skyward as though swept up in a whirlpool.
“He still has this much power…?!”
Lee Cheng, who had been relaxed the entire time, could be seen stiffening.
In the eye of the storm, Iming took one heavy step forward.
—Thunk
The earth split apart with a scream over a single step.
“With my head I uphold the azure heavens, and with my feet I tread the yellow earth!!!”
The crimson earth qi surging from beneath his feet, and the blue heavenly qi plunging down from above.
—Kwoooooom!!!
The two colossal powers pierced through Iming’s body and joined as one.
“This body shall become the pillar linking the vast sky and the thick earth!!”
He tore through the blackened skies of Necropolis,
a massive pillar of light that seemed as though it might reach all the way up to Aden.
“Flowers bloom upon the stalk that links heaven and earth!!! Now, this is my stage!!! It is time for the curtain to rise!!!”
Within that beautiful and tragic pillar of light….
“—Zhengdan, Overlord Demon Princess.”
Reciting the final line of the incantation, Iming slowly walked out.
At that overwhelming spectacle, I swallowed hard.
“No…?!!”
Lee Cheng also goggled, his eyes nearly popping out.
Iming, who’d been buzz-cut bald, now had long hair flowing behind him.
His enormous 130-kilogram frame was wrapped in a blue palace robe adorned with peacock feathers.
Red and black lines were embroidered over a foundation of pure white powder.
The corners of his eyes curved upward in a grotesquely crimson slash, and his lips gleamed blood-red.
At a glance, it looked like a mask.
The exaggerated makeup of a Peking opera actor, lianpu.
Right now, Iming looked exactly like a bewitching princess who’d just burst out of an opera stage.
Only now with a rather high BMI.
For the record, traditional opera stages only allow men to perform, so the historical accuracy checks out.
Though I did wonder what heaven, earth, and man had to do with cross-dressing.
But who the hell cared about that!
“Big Bro, do whatever the hell you want!!!”
Historically, cross-dressing was an act that only men could do—the most masculine thing possible.
But there was an idiot here who couldn’t understand such obvious common sense.
“W-What the hell is that disgusting look…!!!!”
Having regained his senses, Lee Cheng pointed in dumbfounded horror.
“The ultimate beauty, in its purest form.”
“Bullshit!!!!”
“Can’t you see it and understand?”
Curling up like a cat, Iming shouted with a prim, coy air.
“Rowen! Go! I’ve got this!”
The moment he spread his body out,
he vanished from where he stood with the rustle of silk.
This wasn’t the destructive movement from before that shattered the ground and tore the air apart.
A 130-kilogram giant moved, and yet there was no sound, no wind, not even a faint tremor.
Where his body appeared again was right beside Lee Cheng.
“You disgusting bastard! Don’t come near me! Get away!!!”
A faint golden thread gleamed around Lee Cheng as he recoiled in shock, forgetting even his persona.
At Lee Cheng’s gesture, tens of thousands of golden threads poured down like willow branches that had hung for millennia.
“Ten Thousand Gold Threads!!!”
A golden waterfall that minces space into tiny pieces.
Its absolute cutting force collided head-on with Iming’s fist.
——Kwoong!!!!
A thunderous roar like heaven and earth turning upside down.
“Wow! Holy shit!”
As expected of Iming, big bro!
I thought he was a little weak for a Tier 2!
In fact, he’d been hiding his real power all along!
“I-I’m going to kill you for showing me such a hideous spell…! You dare show me something like that!!! Die!”
The two of them clashed, and clashed again.
What I saw looked no different from two natural disasters slamming into each other.
It was not the kind of level where I could jump in from the side or help somehow.
All I could make out were Iming’s afterimages flashing like teleportation,
and the golden threads shredding through space like branches tossed about by the wind.
—Kwoong! Kwoooong!
A vibration that shook my guts rang out,
and every time the two forces crossed, the air screamed as if it were bursting apart.
“Huaaahhhh!!!!”
One thing was certain: Iming was fighting by burning his own life.
It was obvious he was using more power than he was allowed.
Every time he moved once, a blood-mist-like trail was left behind him.
With every breath and every motion, his blood vessels burst, scattering showers of blood.
“Hiiik! Get away! Monster!”
By contrast, Lee Cheng seemed to be horrified by Iming’s Overlord Demon Princess form, but that was all.
The golden threads Lee Cheng scattered writhed like living things, and each one easily blocked Iming’s charge.
—Kugugung!!!
But.
“Uoooooh!!!!”
Little by little, he pushed back.
Like a fairy swimming upstream through a waterfall of gold.
Even when the golden threads tore his clothes, rent his skin, and scraped his bones,
the advance never stopped.
“What is greater—being born beautifully!!!! Or being born ugly and striving to become beautiful!!!!”
One step closer toward Lee Cheng.
“Which is more glorious!!!”
The relaxed color on Lee Cheng’s face grew paler and paler.
“D-Don’t come…! I said don’t come!!!”
Defying the fate given to him,
he was terrified before Iming’s beauty, blazing brilliantly with his life used as kindling.
“Ooooooh!!!!”
And then, at last.
Through the golden waterfall, Iming’s palm touched Lee Cheng’s chest.
—Tap
A tiny sound, utterly swallowed by the battlefield filled with thunderous roars.
And yet it sounded as clear as thunder in my ears.
The instant Lee Cheng’s pupils filled with doubt,
—Daaang!!!
A deafening boom, like a temple bell ringing across the wilderness.
Lee Cheng’s body exploded like a burst water balloon.
2.
With Lee Cheng’s death,
the golden threads that had embroidered the space were snapped one by one and scattered away.
Golden flecks of snow drifting through all of Sector F.
I immediately kicked off the ground.
Iming was standing at the center of that golden blizzard.
“Big Bro! Are you all right!”
“Ahh, Rowen… don’t worry. Right now, I’m the strongest….”
Iming, whose lips had been curling upward, collapsed weakly.
“Big Bro!!!!!”
I rushed over in a panic and caught him in my arms to support him.
Up close, his condition was far more severe.
His torn lungs rattled with a gurgling sound every time he breathed,
and with all his skin gone, not a trace of the tattoos he’d bragged about could be seen.
His huge body was so hot it felt like I’d be burned just by holding him.
He was alive, but only barely—just enough breath left to keep the corpse moving.
“Big Bro….”
“Rowen, like I said… I can’t go with you.”
“Don’t say that! If Big Bro isn’t going, then I’m not going either!”
“You have to listen to your big brother….”
Iming barely managed to reach into his chest and pull something out to show me.
Five all-purpose shoes, soaked in blood.
“With this… you should be able to move the elevator…. Cough…! Once you reach Aden…. go straight to Smuggler Street and… head to Changhwa Pavilion…. And when you mention my name….”
If he’d conserved that much strength, he could have escaped on his own.
And yet he stayed here.
Putting his life on the line to protect his little brother.
Even at this moment, with his breath fading away, he was still worrying about me.
I hesitated.
Parting ways was approaching.
Was I supposed to end this beautiful farewell with a completely white lie?
Or….
“Big Bro, I don’t deserve to receive a love like this…! The truth is, I….”
I’d made up my mind and was about to tell him the truth.
“Kha! Kha-hahaha…!”
Iming laughed.
Laughing with his teeth bared, stained bright red with blood.
“You… stupid little bastard. Did you really think I… wouldn’t investigate my own underling’s background?”
As if it were simply amusing.
“You… running around screwing Seres… do you really think I didn’t know, you idiot….”
I realized it.
At some point,
he’d stopped giving me orders to bring him Seres’s stockings or high heels.
Iming had known everything.
Iming’s wok-lid-sized hand grabbed mine in a flash.
There was warmth in his eyes.
“Even so, you’re still my… Yoopi. Would I… cut off my own arm?”
Real-life farewells don’t give you enough time to share your heart the way movies do.
From Iming’s smiling throat, his last breath slipped out with a click.
The strength left the arm that had been gripping my hand so tightly.
I spread my palm open.
The blood-soaked all-purpose shoes he’d shoved into my hand gleamed.
I stared down at them for a long while.
For some reason, a bitter laugh escaped me.
“No, Big Bro. If you just shove this into my hands out of nowhere….”
All-purpose shoes are a death flag.
That illustrious Bureau’s Kisara Yagyu would come and neatly chop my head off in about three hours.
“Don’t worry. We’ll meet again.”
I closed Iming’s eyes and brought my last cigarette to my lips.
Purple smoke drifted apart.
So this round really is over.
Wasn’t this the most eventful one yet?
“…Cedric.”
I turned toward the voice calling my name,There stood Seres.