Chapter 61: Deserted Island Survival Training (7)

The corpses of the Undertakers, around ten of them, lay sprawled on the rocky ground, slowly growing cold.

Their bruised, lifeless faces completely killed my appetite.

“…Hah.”

It was a strange feeling, different from taking down a magical beast. However, I didn’t feel even a shred of regret or hesitation.

They had initiated the attack, and I had only defended myself. Besides, being hired assassins, human butchers, there was no reason to show them mercy.

‘This seems to be more or less resolved.’

I extended my perception, but I detected no one else alive nearby except for Lei Shen and me.

Lei Shen, locking eyes with me, pressed her lips together tightly.

Although she glared at me fiercely, trembling with both combat knives in her hands, her body seemed paralyzed, unable to move.

She appeared to be in a position ready to attack at any moment, but something held her back, as if she were chained in place.

It was probably the effect of “Imposes intimidation in speech and actions” from the Blessing of the Sword God.

Now that I thought about it, up until now, I had only faced monsters, demons, and creatures much stronger than humans, so this effect of the blessing had rarely been useful.

It seemed this power worked best against humans, especially when their numbers were small.

Lei Shen, trembling in front of me, was living proof of that.

I flicked my wrist to clean the blood from my knife, but it was so soaked that it didn’t come off completely, making me frown.

I had used three of my sashimi knives to launch attacks against the hidden enemies, so I only had two left.

With no other choice, I wiped the blood off on the sleeve of my shirt before sheathing the knife.

Then, I turned my gaze to Lei Shen.

“Lei Shen.”

When I called her name, her eyebrows drew together into a straight line.

At that moment, the pressure that kept her immobilized seemed to dissipate, and Lei Shen exhaled loudly, her breathing ragged.

Next, with a hardened expression, she looked me straight in the eyes.

“Tell me who sent you.”

“…Do you think I’ll tell you?”

Lei Shen’s eyes burned with a murderous glint. I shook my head and let out a long sigh.

I vaguely remembered seeing Lei Shen in her human form during the main storyline of the game Miracle Blessing M, and I knew at least part of her personality.

To be generous, you could say she was a committed professional.

To be honest, she was an assassin with an absurd philosophy. Persuading her with words wouldn’t work.

The only way was to crush her with sheer fear until she talked.

This was a unique opportunity to discover who was behind the attempts to kill me.

If I finished her off without getting that information, I would probably regret it for a long time.

I pointed my thumb at the now-cold corpses of her subordinates and added:

“Your subordinates ended up like this. Are you stupid or just brave? It would be better for both of us if you talk now.”

“…Damn lunatic.”

Lei Shen spat the words as she staggered and regained her balance.

Her face, now pale, showed a mixture of hatred and despair.

Perhaps she was driven by revenge for her subordinates or simply by senseless pride, but her eyes still burned with determination.

I clicked my tongue at the sight.

The air was already thick with the stench of blood, and Lei Shen’s stubborn attitude only made it more unbearable.

It was ironic that a hired assassin, someone at the bottom of the moral scale, had the audacity to call me a lunatic.

Moreover, the Undertakers were a notoriously ruthless group, known as one of the three most infamous in the underworld. They didn’t discriminate between allies and enemies as long as they were paid, killing anyone without remorse.

The fact that they had attacked me without a word showed how nonexistent their moral code was.

If I hadn’t been alert, I would probably have died before I even realized it.

That’s why I didn’t hesitate to eliminate them immediately.

Meanwhile, Lei Shen began channeling a torrent of murky energy into the knives she held.

The atmosphere shifted dramatically as that chaotic energy swirled around her.

I supposed that level of skill was the bare minimum required for someone like her to eventually make a pact with a demonic corps commander.

‘Is her mind on another level?’

Under my cold gaze, Lei Shen seemed to shudder for a moment, but then she let out a sarcastic laugh, completely out of place.

“Ha… Now I understand why that old man hired us to kill you. I should have known when I found out that all your personal information, including your parents and family, had been erased. That old man dared to task us with hunting down a villain…”

Lei Shen began muttering, seemingly talking to herself.

At that moment, something shifted inside me.

Her words about not having any family echoed in my mind.

What did that mean? In this world, I had my parents, who had cared for me for the past year.

I lifted my head slightly and looked at Lei Shen.

With a twisted expression, she kept muttering bitterly, but her tone didn’t sound like she was lying.

My intuition told me she wasn’t lying, but what unsettled me most was that, for some reason, I couldn’t remember my parents’ faces.

‘…What did they look like?’

It was as if those memories had been deliberately erased, dissolving like a mirage.

The address of my home before entering the academy, the conversations I had with them… everything seemed to fade away, leaving only a vague echo.

“Damn it. I should have cut that old man’s head off from the beginning…”

“Hey.”

I interrupted Lei Shen’s rambling, making her look at me for a moment before falling silent.

What came out of my mouth was a tone so cold that even I was surprised.

Within seconds, fear spread across Lei Shen’s face.

“What did you just say?”

“What…?”

Lei Shen stared at me blankly, her lips trembling, cold sweat running down her forehead.

“You said I don’t have any family or parents?”

“…”

Lei Shen remained still, her lips pressed tight, like a statue.

The mocking smile she had shown before vanished, leaving her face completely pale.

“At first, I just wanted to know who hired you to kill you, and let you go in peace.”

“…”

I slowly unsheathed my sashimi knife. Lei Shen, paralyzed, couldn’t utter a word.

“But now I have something else I want to ask you.”

“…!”

“For your information, this isn’t a negotiation; it’s a threat.”

Lei Shen’s face grew even paler, as if she already knew what was going to happen.

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

Click~

As I partially drew the knife from its sheath, the blood accumulated on the blade dripped slowly.

The sound of the liquid hitting the ground mingled with the echoes of birds, adding to the eerie atmosphere. That was the moment I stepped forward, showing my knife clearly.

When I stepped forward, revealing the full blade, something unexpected happened.

Thump-

A sudden wave of dizziness surged through my body, as if I had been struck on the back of the neck.

A terrible flow of dark energy enveloped me, and in an instant, I knew what it was.

“Magic…?”

A torrent of suffocating magic surrounded me, pressing on my body with a force that almost made me lose consciousness.

“Damn it! What’s happening?”

The place where Lei Shen and I stood began to distort as if it were being separated from the rest of the world.

But what I saw next was even more disconcerting.

The blood pooled around the corpses of the Undertakers began to move slowly, crawling toward Lei Shen as if it had a life of its own.

Immediately, the blood, as thin as a thread, coiled like a snake, forming chains and running toward her. It spread along her feet and traced lines over her body.

“What… what is this!?”

Perhaps because it was an unexpected situation, she screamed quickly, her face filled with surprise and fear.

Lei Shen slashed at the bloody chains with the knife she held, but the speed at which they invaded her body was faster than she could cut.

“I don’t want to die!”

Lei Shen let out a tearful scream.

But suddenly, a murky haze covered her eyes, as if the fragile reason she clung to had shattered. Her limbs went completely limp.

When the light of life disappeared from her pupils, her eyelids closed on their own. A thick layer of blood covered her entire body.

Moments later, Lei Shen’s body began to float in the air. The clear blue sky darkened abruptly with black clouds, and the birds singing as they flew dropped to the ground in unison.

Rumble, rumble, rumble.

An unnatural power covered the sky, and everywhere the sounds of inevitable deaths echoed painfully.

What was happening before my eyes felt like a true calamity had descended.

***

On the same day, early in the morning, the Sword Master, Siegfried, was quietly enjoying a fishing session.

It was a simple pastime that he had cultivated since his hair began to frost over with gray.

Only in the twilight of a life that had run tirelessly for seventy years did he understand that fishing and the art of the sword shared a subtle resemblance.

Tuning his senses to the tip of his fingers, patiently waiting for something to bite the hook, was similar to the meditation he practiced with a sword in hand, sitting cross-legged.

The gentle sound of a stream filtered into Siegfried’s sharp ears, while the cool air brushed his wrinkled cheeks with an almost icy freshness.

‘Make sure nothing happens to the students. If you get bored, go fishing or something.’

He recalled Media’s face as she said this, rifling through a stack of documents piled like a mountain.

Although he had been sent to the island as a security measure following the chaos of the midterm exam, Siegfried nonetheless indulged in the calm and the beauty of nature.

And it was not just any place — the setting was the island of Avalon, with its majestic atmosphere.

On the water’s surface, where gentle ripples created reflections, the silhouette of the great Yggdrasil stood in all its grandeur.

“Not bad for a supervisory mission.”

Siegfried murmured with a slight tune in his voice as he watched the bobber intently.

And then, his thoughts drifted. Just as they say that fishing is a way to capture time, it is also a struggle against oneself. If you pull on the rod at the slightest movement, you’ll never catch a big fish.

About five minutes passed, and Siegfried frowned.

“…Today doesn’t seem to be my day.”

Usually, a fish would bite within one or two minutes, but this time there was no sign. The feeling in his hands was too calm. He looked at the bobber from every angle, then glanced at his rod with disdain.

“It’s not worth what it cost.”

At that moment, an unpleasant screech of birds rang out from the sky. The bright blue landscape began to slowly take on an ominous dark hue.

Instinctively, Siegfried lifted his eyes to the sky as he felt a disturbing energy faintly emanating from his left.

At the same time, a chill ran through his entire body, making every hair on his skin stand on end.

The calm waters of the stream churned like the erratic beats of a damaged heart, while the birds in the surrounding forest fled with the loud flapping of wings.

Siegfried sharpened his vision, searching for the source of that ominous energy. It came from the left, spreading in waves toward his location.

“This can’t be… this is…!”

That unsettling current was something Siegfried recognized deeply within his old body. It was the resonance of magic.

What was happening there? The island of Avalon, protected by the sacred power of Yggdrasil, should not permit the presence of magical beasts or demons.

But what his instincts clearly perceived was, without a doubt, magic.

And not just any magic. It was colossal magic, overflowing, breaking all imaginable limits — a devastating force.

The sensation of something vile licking his skin with spines made it burn and tingle.

Not only that, but the previously beautiful landscape seemed to fade under the heat of that magical surge, while the forest animals let out heartrending cries and collapsed, frothing at the mouth.

“A demon capable of unleashing magic of this magnitude…”

Siegfried touched his wrinkled lips thoughtfully, before standing up with a serious expression. A suffocating feeling, as if his heart was about to stop, gripped him.

However, he quickly cast aside the rod he was holding, unsheathed the hilt of the sword at his waist, and moved forward with determination.