Ppu………Eng.
I tried to imitate Yane just once.
I guess I’m just far from being cute… Even I think it’s a bit off.
I shook off those useless thoughts and got up from my seat.
When I closed my eyes and opened them again, the place wasn’t the world I knew.
It seemed like a dark ink was mixed in, and pure white light was erratically blending within the ink.
I pinched my cheek and felt no pain.
No, it’s not that I wouldn’t normally feel pain from just pinching my cheek, but the absence of even the slightest sensation made it easy for me to realize that this place was not reality.
“Being in a room of consciousness and time or an inner world is too cliché.”
Looking around at the large holes scattered in the air, it felt like I was caught inside a giant cheese, but the colors felt different from anything I had experienced on Earth or in the human world.
Then again, I wouldn’t see such colors in dungeons crawling with monsters or malicious entities.
Brilliant galaxies that looked like they were holding starlight flowed through the dark ink, and what appeared to be galaxies melted like wax in the presence of the white divine power.
This endlessly repeating space felt reminiscent of when I was trapped in the Gongheo Gungjeon by the Demon King long ago. The place was the very intersection of twisted colors and space that I could remember.
A place that could hardly be defined as my own soul’s space.
Too vast a soul is a problem too.
It’s good that my soul doesn’t get diminished or eaten up in regular situations, but it’s awkward when I fall into a state like this, separating from my own ego and soul world.
What can I do when even the master doesn’t know the way?
In the end, all I could do was walk.
I don’t know if it’s accurate to say walking in a world of souls or an imaginary realm without a physical body, but what else could I do?
[Hello!]
[Go Seongnyeo!]
[Hello, Seongnyeo!]
[Long time no see, Shia~]
“Yeah, hello….”
Passing by numerous tombstones built within my soul, it felt like voices that were no different from my memories pierced through me.
At least everyone seemed to be okay.
Something hotter than lava was rising, choking my throat, but…. I was still alright.
There was a nagging worry that the Soul Absorption spell from the Jeokgeumbal Ineo Gongju might have interfered with my companions’ souls, but fortunately, it seemed what was taken was merely a trivial amount of life force.
I was really relieved.
If what was taken had not just been simple life force but the souls of those buried in my tombstone, I would have surely killed that mermaid to get the souls back.
I’m really glad.
I’m glad…
“I don’t have to kill that Mermaid Princess yet….”
Since no one has died or any big trouble has occurred.
The reason I came here might be simple.
It’s because I temporarily lost consciousness due to internal or external reasons.
It’s a bit strange to say, but when I sleep, things can get a bit complicated.
I can lie down and close my eyes just like humans fall into a sleep state.
However, when I go into a coma, the subject of my soul and consciousness isn’t me anymore.
To put it simply, if I lose the control of my reason and soul, something will take its place, and that substitute is the very corpse of the god that is parasitizing my body.
So in form, it takes the shape of a tentacle, and once frolicked among the stars. Now it’s a pure and delicate yet cruel trace of starlight that helps and works with me.
We’ve been together for 64 years, but I still don’t know its name.
I don’t need to know. I think it’s better that we don’t know each other.
Anyway, I wandered through this room of consciousness and time? No, my soul’s cradle? The world of imagination?
I finally managed to find what I had been looking for amidst the chaos.
The process of converting the black malicious entity I had consumed into pure white divine power was hard to describe as a beautiful sight in mere words.
The scene that would seem more fitting in a hot spring of a volcanic area or a mountain lake was mixed with black ink and white paint-like divine power. It was bubbling like a witch’s cauldron, so if modern psychiatrists or experts in psychiatric medicine were to see this, they might very well scream to imprison me.
In any case, this is the world of my soul.
Among them, the deep part was the most important.
Whenever I consume fragments of the Demon King or monsters or the equivalent of malicious entities, the filth filtered through my soul and digestion is sent to the starlight god I serve.
And the starlight god… or rather, the corpse of the god turns the malicious entity into divine power, and that was the basic mechanism of how my soul world operates.
[Hehe, he…]
“Ah, there you are.”
A girl was curled up in the middle of a pool of melted divine power.
She might seem out of place here.
The first thing that caught my eye was her pure white hair.
Though it was a bit ambiguous to call it hair.
It wasn’t hair but countless living tentacles replacing that place instead. She wasn’t wearing a single thread, but she undoubtedly bore the same exterior as my Mangja Seongnyeo.
“God. God.”
[He, hehe…..]
Without responding to my words, the god stirred the pool of mixed malicious entities and divine power gently with her hand.
There reflected the Jeokgeumbal Ineo Gongju I had seen earlier.
Oh dear……
“God, stop it now.”
[He, hee…]
I gently wrapped my arms around the god from behind.
Though we hardly spoke, having been together for so long made it feel wrong to raise my voice at her.
Unknowingly, I had already developed many attachments. She was a being that was almost one with me.
However, the starlight corpse seemed unwilling to listen to my words.
Crack!
[Ku, huff…!]
[Hehe, he, hehe…]
“………”
The outside world reflected in the pool of divine power seemed to grow more desperate.
I knew many undead armies had been shattered, but the Jeokgeumbal Ineo Gongju was also being captured by the god who possessed my body, dying in real-time.
The mermaid’s beautiful body was wrapped by the god’s tentacles and tightly bound, and the god, with an innocent face like a child breaking toys, was strangling the mermaid’s neck.
“God. Stop it.”
[Hehee…..?]
Whispering into the ear of the god that I was trying to hold tightly, only then did the god turn to look at me.
[…Aack…]
“What?”
[Ack… Seong…..]
The god, perhaps finding it difficult to mimic the vocal cords of a human, barely uttered a short word while pointing at the mermaid.
It seemed she determined that the thick malicious aura emanating from that mermaid was a reason to kill her.
To be honest, if I used the fragment of the Demon King, I thought there was indeed sufficient reason to kill the mermaid.
Just possessing a fragment proved the host’s malice, hatred, and insatiable desire.
Of course, with such a dense malicious entity, I felt as the Seongnyeo that I had an obligation to destroy at least that fragment.
The god’s judgment was entirely rational and correct.
With just a moment of losing my consciousness due to the Soul Absorption spell, it would have been best from the god’s standpoint to act quickly and suppress the Jeokgeumbal Ineo Gongju. Killing a suspected owner of a fragment of the Demon King would logically be a necessary act for the god.
There are no exceptions.
[Hehe….]
[Ko……Ah….A………….]
Seeing as the god seemed to interpret my agreement, she redirected her attention to the pool and began to squeeze the body of the Jeokgeumbal Ineo even tighter.
The tentacles choking her neck, binding her arms and legs, and constricting her chest further pressed against the mermaid’s body, causing a black ichor to ooze from the wounds and scales.
Perhaps with a little more pressure here, the mermaid would die and the fragment would also be retrieved.
[Unnie…..]
Of course, I didn’t feel comfortable.
There’s no way it would be joyful to kill someone, right?
Seeing the face of the Jeokgeumbal Ineo Gongju slowly rolling her eyes was not enjoyable at all.
[Help me……]
“….!?”
The moment those words rang out within me, a voice that shouldn’t be heard echoed.
Who is it?
I could deduce the owner of that voice.
It was the mermaid who had guided me here in the sea near Busan before I plummeted into the world of the deep sea.
But no matter how I looked around, I couldn’t find that mermaid.
No, that’s not the problem….
‘I can’t remember what the mermaid looks like…‘
I clearly remember the numerous hands from the sea that guided me.
The voice of that mermaid asking for help was vivid, but I couldn’t remember her appearance.
I hadn’t felt any discomfort when she was right in front of me…
[Please…]
“…….”
[Please, help me….]
But the mermaid’s voice surely reached my ears.
Okay, let’s think this through one by one.
No matter how much of a malicious entity she carried, even if she possessed a fragment of the Demon King… it’s not confirmed yet.
Even if the possibility is high, I can’t ignore the worst-case scenario. Accumulating grudges and hatred to the point of expressing such malice without fragments is close to impossible, but it’s not impossible either.
And I didn’t come here to kill anyone.
I came to hear cries for help. To listen to the prayers of those seeking salvation. I came to fulfill the intense wishes and hopes of another.
A Seongnyeo is not one who kills but one who saves.
If I can do nothing except kill when hearing cries for help, I would not be a Seongnyeo but a butcher, and I swore as a Seongnyeo to bear the sins of the past and the sins of the future.
That’s my means of proving my humanity.
“God.”
I cautiously hugged the god again and whispered in her ear.
“God, can you… hear me?”
[Hehe… He… H…]
“Let’s stop here, okay?”
[He, he…]
She seemed to reject my words as the tentacles covering the god’s head wriggled, expressing her refusal.
Given that, it was time to use my trump card….
“What you like, Menelapie wouldn’t want this kind of thing either.”
[…………..Me…….ne….laa…pi…?]
“If you kill the mermaid, and you get excited by her blood… we’ll become monsters. If we turn into greedy monsters, Menelapie would have no choice but to cut us down, even if she were sad.”
[….!!!]
“You don’t want that, do you? Right?”
[…………He…he…]
Upon imagining that Menelapie would cut us down while crying, the god’s shoulders noticeably drooped.
Seeing her strength waning, I could perceive my own hand reflected in the pool losing power too.
I intertwined my fingers with the god’s thin hand to comfort her.
“It’s alright, god. Just wait for about a hundred years, and I’ll let you meet her.”
[…………]
“Don’t worry. Menelapie is my hero. She couldn’t possibly hate you, right?”
[……………….E, he…]
By the time I had finished that sentence, this room of consciousness and time started to crumble.
Crumble might sound strange. This place is indeed where the god resides.
However, it is merely the process of my closing my eyes to opening them again.
Yeah, I’m relieved.
I’m glad that my words could be this easily accepted.
○○○○○
‘Unnie….’
The mermaid princess with the Hyung-An’s vision sensed the final moments of her life approaching and relaxed her body.
The dark malice overflowing from her eyes streamed down like tear stains, but being completely bound by those horrifying tentacles, she couldn’t even move a single finger.
She wasn’t scared of dying.
But what would happen after death… what would happen to this dark and deep deep sea?
Would it fall back into the hands of humans like before?
Or would another foolish and silly mermaid like her emerge and make the same mistake?
She always wished for death.
She wanted to follow the footsteps of someone precious who had vanished, but she did not want to die this way.
‘Unnie……’
Ah, now it’s really the end.
The tentacles tightening all over her body were violating all her struggles and resistance, and a final bubble was forming at her lips, signaling her end. The undead army under her control was no longer present.
Ahh, humans.
How much did you want to humiliate us that you even sent such a monster?
“Ah…..!”
In that moment, the eyes of Shia, which had just moments ago gleamed with darkness, turned golden.
I don’t know how it happened.
In the blink of an eye, Shia’s eyes were shining with a golden hue, and immediately the strength binding the Jeokgeumbal Ineo’s body vanished.
“Ugh, ugh…. U…Uk…!”
With the flood of seawater suddenly allowing her to breathe, the Jeokgeumbal Ineo Gongju instinctively opened her gills and started gulping in air, while Shia immediately cast a miracle just in case Hyung-An’s Mermaid Princess was to encounter any problems.
[Miracle – Great Healing]
The torn skin and scales of the mermaid returned to their original state, and even the joints that had been bent uncomfortably were restored.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry… I was about to kill you because you were too strong. I’m really sorry.”
“What are… your intentions….!”
Still wary, the Hyung-An’s Mermaid Princess responded. But the disparity in power had been imprinted on her body, and her resistance was weak.
‘What on earth is going on….?’
The Hyung-An’s Mermaid Princess didn’t know much about this outsider named Shia, but she could tell that Shia had transformed back from something near an alien from the outside into a human in an instant.
She was confused because someone like that had turned back to being human in one moment.
“Um, first of all, I’m sorry, Mermaid Princess. But… do you know who she is?”
Saying that, Shia pointed to a faint ghost-like figure hooked to her tentacles as if it were an umbilical cord.
That figure suddenly clung to Shia’s body like a parasite.
If it were a human, you might say a ghost was wrapped around them, but for someone who had sent wishes and hopes, calling it a ghost was excessive.
[Thank you…]
Shia knew who that was.
She had almost intended to feast on the mermaid, but somehow she had become friends with Yane— that mermaid who guided her to this sea dungeon and was the one pleading for her to save the Hyung-An’s Mermaid Princess.
From the moment they entered this sea dungeon, she had not been seen.
Though she couldn’t properly remember her design, the mermaid connected to Shia now had a distinctly blue hair color.
And the Hyung-An’s Mermaid Princess began to tremble her lips upon seeing the blue-haired mermaid.
“Un…nie……?”
At that, the blue-haired mermaid… no, the ghost mermaid stuck to Shia smiled brightly.
[Hello, sister!]
