TN: Thank Nepper for the chapter.
TL/PR: Ruminas; ED: novicelily
When I regained consciousness, I found myself in endless darkness.
It was an empty, unconscious space surrounded by blackness on all sides. I walked through the vast void where nothing existed.
The movement felt pointless. There was nothing else I could do, so I moved forward, almost as if entranced.
My mind was blank. I couldn’t remember what happened before. I was sure I had curled up somewhere in the back alley, waiting for death.
But this place was neither the back alley nor the afterlife.
It was just a nightmare, a deep nightmare from which I couldn’t wake.
“……”
How long had I been walking?
Something blocked my path. I could no longer move forward, obstructed by something.
It was a giant mirror. My image, how I appeared after falling into this world, was reflected in it.
I hadn’t noticed the full extent of the damage beneath my clothes, but now I see it.
My body was riddled with wounds, soaked in blood, most of them self-inflicted.
Stabbed by knives and burned by fire, and my wrists were marred with fang marks.
Even though this body can’t die easily, it was far from invincible.
Regenerating those wounds consumed a considerable amount of energy. When that energy is depleted, the wounds remain unhealed.
Looking at my reflection, I realized how much I had torn myself apart. What was once a body with some beauty was now drenched in blood.
I knew how to regenerate. All it took was drinking blood. Perhaps this body had been designed that way from the start.
It’s impossible to move endlessly without eating, right? No matter how strange this body is, in the end, it’s still a living being. It hasn’t deviated too far from the common sense I once knew.
The knife wounds stung. But I didn’t feel the urge to regenerate them because to do so, I’d need to hurt someone else again.
I didn’t want to live by drinking someone else’s blood.
I can’t kill humans. Even though I’m no longer one, I was human once.
If I waited like this, I would finally fall into the rest I desperately wanted.
Death is frightening, but sometimes life can be even scarier.
So I waited.
For everything to end and the existence called ‘me’ to disappear from this world.
But something unexpected happened.
The wounds on my body, reflected in the mirror, began to heal. Split skin fused back together, and blood regenerated. Also, my body, which had been on the verge of collapse, was regaining vitality.
“……How?”
I refused to believe what I was seeing.
This shouldn’t be happening.
I had used up all my energy. My body was at its limit, barely able to move.
Yet, somehow, life was returning to it. And there was only one way for this body to recover energy.
“That can’t be.”
It can’t be.
I hadn’t eaten any humans. I’d been here this whole time.
But… is that really true?
I had the eerie sensation that the reflection in the mirror was speaking to me.
The Iria in the mirror looked at me and whispered a cruel truth, one I wasn’t ready to accept; that I am a murderer. That I killed people.
“That…… It wasn’t me,” I whispered.
My body acted on its own. I lost control and lost consciousness, and when I came to my senses, it was already over.
And now…
It was happening again.
The more people I killed, the more blood I drank, and the further I drifted from humanity.
How many more will this out-of-control body take this time? The fear of it overwhelmed me, and I crumpled to the ground.
I just wanted to escape this nightmare. I just wanted to close my eyes forever without harming anyone else.
But the nightmare kept dragging me down, pulling me deeper into its clutches as I tried to break free. Binding me tighter.
I only wanted to kill the monster within me, but all I’ve done is create another disaster.
Each time my body slaughtered humans without my consent, I felt the horror of it even here.
The emotions and fragments of humanity I still held onto were fading.
Like sinking beneath the surface into deep, suffocating waters, I was steadily losing my grip on what made me human.
The final reflection I saw in the mirror looked more like a monster than a person.
***
-Central Empire, a place called Dusty Lane. Commonly known as the back alley.-
Although it is within the Empire’s boundaries, it has long since been perceived as a separate world.
From the beginning, citizens held a deeply negative view of the place.
It was full of filth, overrun with garbage, and had become a den for criminals.
Homeless people gathered there, further adding to the squalor.
The Empire’s knights had long stopped patrolling the area; it was too unsavory for them to bother.
Was that why?
-Kuguuuung.
The response to the monster’s appearance came too late.
Being on the outskirts of the Empire, it took time for the knights to arrive. By the time they did, everyone in the back alley was already dead.
Everything collapsed and burned, leaving behind only ruins.
News of the back alley’s destruction reached the upper ranks of the knights. A monster had appeared within the Empire, and thick, ominous magical energy had enveloped the area.
Sertia, the one with the final decision-making authority, knew this was no ordinary situation. She immediately dispatched the strongest force she had available.
With magical energy blanketing the area, numbers would mean nothing. Any ordinary knight who set foot there would be rendered powerless.
So, only one person was sent.
Her light sky-blue hair fluttered in the air.
Her name was Freya, but many called her the Sword Saint.
She was the Empire’s first general, undeniably its most powerful warrior.
Excluding Sertia, who could no longer fight on the frontlines, Freya was the strongest human in the Empire. And she stepped into the heart of Dusty Lane.
The area had mostly collapsed into ruins, yet Freya held her sword steady.
A single figure stood at the center of the reddish magical energy and the sea of flames.
A girl with silver hair.
It was an alien sight.
In this vast ruin, she was the only living being.
Except for the girl, all humans were dead. The back alley now reeked of death.
“Are you the back alley monster?”
“……”
Freya points the sword in her hand at the girl.
The monster before her was far different from what she had imagined.
She had expected a ferocious, towering beast. But standing before her was a girl with a strikingly beautiful appearance.
Even so, Freya didn’t let her guard down.
Regardless of appearance, what was before her eyes was the worst murderer who had killed all the humans in this area.
Freya met the monster’s red eyes like that.
Those clear eyes, even in the gloom, looked disturbingly empty, as if their owner had been lost somewhere else.
The pressure they exerted was overwhelming. Freya, facing the girl, felt a splitting headache.
Was this a mental attack?
She quickly decided she should no longer meet those eyes.
Closing her eyes, Freya could still sense everything. In this desolate wasteland, the monster’s presence stood out like a beacon.
She could see even with her eyes closed. She was a swordswoman who relied more on senses than sight.
Freya asks the monster with her eyes closed.
“If you’re human, state your identity. If not, I’ll cut you down.”
“……”
There is no answer. A heavy silence settled between the human and the monster.
After some time passed like that.
“It seems you’re not human after all.”
With that, she struck.
The greatest swordswoman in the Empire cleaved the sky with a single stroke.
Iria extended her black needles, but she was too late. Freya, in motion, was faster.
The sound of a sharp sword cutting through something’s skin echoed.
For the first time, a wound inflicted by a human was engraved on Iria’s body.
But it regenerated quickly, sustained by the lives of the hundreds she had taken.
“……”
Iria’s expression shifted as the pain registered.
Pain often pulls reason back to the surface. Part of her berserk mind, overwhelmed by her uncontrollable power, slowly began to return.
Iria glanced around, trying to understand what was happening.
But her clarity was short-lived. Freya struck again, her relentless sword swings interrupting Iria’s thoughts.
How could Iria describe this feeling?
“……”
It was irritating.
***
I turn my head and look at the atrocity I committed.
I’ve killed countless humans by now, becoming a living disaster that burned part of the Empire.
And,
I killed the only person who was kind to me since I fell into this world—with my own hands.
How do I know?
When I regained consciousness after the magical energy spread, memories of the humans who had died flooded my mind.
The sensation of all those memories tangling together clouded my thoughts; it wasn’t something I could describe as good, even if I tried to lie.
Among them were Riana’s memories.
I remember grabbing her with my own hands, sinking my fangs into her. That memory came with a sharp, piercing headache.
I killed Riana.
Maybe I knew this was going to happen all along. That’s why I tried not to see her again.
How could something no longer human stay close to a human? This would’ve happened sooner or later if she hadn’t left my side.
I was sad that Riana died.
I felt guilty for killing so many humans.
But,
“……”
It wasn’t enough to make me cry, and it didn’t feel as sad as I thought it would.
Instead, I felt a deep, hollow emptiness. As if most of me had drained away.
It was that kind of day.
‘It would’ve been nice if it were raining.’
There was too much blood on my body.
But there was no rain to wash it away.
In the end, I had to walk away, feeling filthy.
“Sleep well, Freya.”
That was all I said to the woman who had collapsed, bleeding, on the ground.
Black needles had pierced her entire body. She’d die soon.
The stump of my severed right arm throbbed.
Even for a body like mine, capable of quick regeneration, losing a limb was troublesome.
Not that it mattered anymore.
“……”
I walked through the ruins of the back alley.
It was a place where nothing remained now, but it still felt like home to me.
I had nowhere else to go.
The back alley was quiet today.
It seemed it would stay quiet from now on too.
Translator’s Corner
You may have already noticed, but I’m sticking to a 1 chap per day schedule. We’re catching up to raws, and the author hasn’t posted in a while.
-Ruminas