NOVEL NEXT Chapter 21
Chapter 21. A Report On The Undying
The scenery quickly changed outside the window. We left the forest that we were in, and a giant plain appeared before us.
Honk–
After the horn sounded, an announcement by the captain rang through the train cars.
[Thank you for boarding. This train is headed for Hope, and it has departed from the station Kuboren, Kuboren station…]
Thanks to Necro buying the entire carriage for ourselves, it was quite spacious and nice inside. This is what trips are supposed to be like. Thanks to this being the VIP room, there was quite a lot of space inside. I decided to let Necro take the room in front of mine. Who knows? The man might snore.
“Hah!”
The saint leaned back the two chairs and lay down. Since it took eight hours to get to our destination, Volez, it seemed that she was going to sleep.
“I get to have such nice treatment thanks to Mr. Murderer… I must’ve acquired quite a bit of positive karma… heh.”
You’re kidding me. The saint pretty much melted into her seat. She almost looked like a cat in that position.
“…….”
“What’s with the lewd eyes?”
“The soldiers are all traveling while standing up, and here you are lying down like a lazy pig. How about you try doing a handstand for the rest of the trip out of atonement?”
The saint made an annoyed face at my kind advice.
“Would the soldiers feel more comfortable if I did a handstand? No. I’m corrupted through and through.”
“Demon.”
“I’m gonna go to hell anyway, so I might as well enjoy life now.”
“In any case, give me the documents I need to see.”
I saw one of the soldiers hand the saint a document before getting on the train.
“You’re quite the workaholic, Mr. Murderer.”
The saint began to move her bare feet. I was wondering what she was trying to do with it until she managed to dig out the document with her foot. This girl, she doesn’t even want to sit up?
“Here it is. The updated information on the Warrior.”
“Smells like feet.”
“Does not. Are you sure you aren’t mistaking the smell of flowers for smell of feet? Here, indulge in the smell.”
I dodged as she tried to rub her feet into my face. Feels like her treatment of me has worsened recently… I’m acting a lot bubblier than usual to fit her personality, but I’m still a murderer… I took the document and looked down. The saint’s skirt slid up, creating a crack that allowed me to see some sensitive areas.
“I can see everything.”
“Don’t care about you seeing it.”
The saint responded dryly and rolled towards the window.
“……”
Students these days can be quite scary. Thank god she’s not treating me like a bag of trash. I took out the document from its container. The first page had the word “classified” stamped onto it, and the next page had a picture of a blonde teen on it. He looked like…
A model who exercised vigorously. The name of the person was Romeo Smith. AKA “The Warrior”. He was one of the key members of the hero’s party, and he worked as a tank. In the document, or rather, report, was detailed information on his stats, achievements, and items.
Let’s… check out his stats first, shall we? When I turned to the next page, the Oracle created a copy of the status page in front of me.
“Level 10…”
He was two levels higher than the strongest white wizard in the world.
“How strong is he?”
The saint responded vaguely to my question.
“Around three times?”
“Eh?”
“…If a level one is an average person, a level two would be able to defeat two average people in a small room. It keeps going up like that. Level threes are able to take on two level twos, and level fours are…”
“So two level nines can never beat a level ten?”
“Well, it’s not ‘absolute’, but… yes, that’s pretty much how it goes. But in front of [Memento Mori], it doesn’t matter how many level nines are involved.”
The saint was talking about the Warrior’s power. [Memento Mori]. “Remember you must die”, in Latin. A phrase that the slaves of Rome shouted at the general who returned from a winning battle.
[The Undying = Memento Mori] – An ability to overcome death.
– [Lv.1] Predicting Death (Able to feel killing intent and oncoming threats of death)
– [Lv.2] An immunity from death by fatigue.
– [Lv.3] An immunity from death by injuries.
– [Lv.4] An immunity from death by poison, sickness, or foreign elements.
– [Lv.5] An immunity from death by loss of blood, amputation, or any loss of a body part.
– [Lv.6] An immunity from death by heat radiation, or any form of cell injury.
– [Lv.7] An immunity from death by loss of air, food, or water.
– [Lv.8] An immunity from death by age.
Level 8… I guess one thing I should be thankful for is the fact that he’s not immune to everything.
“About level six. Did you guys ever try using radiation or electricity?”
“We tried using a beast that could let out lethal amounts of electricity, and a golem that let out radiation, but none of them worked! Ah, the electric beast gave him some trouble.”
“……”
Wasn’t specific enough. He might as well be immune to all sorts of death.
“Undying, huh…”
In the past, the standard for death was “the heart coming to a stop”. In the present, the standard for death is becoming brain dead. I wonder what the standard would be in the future? Would the standard for death be the breakdown of cells? Would it be possible to call someone who can’t do anything “alive”? Let’s try widening the meaning of life and death.
What is life? What is death? Would I be considered to be alive? After reading the abilities granted by Memento Mori again, I stopped at level seven.
Immunity from starvation. You don’t die no matter how much you starve? Even if you deplete your body of nutrients? Humans aren’t machines of perpetual motion. They aren’t invincible either. What if the Warrior drowned in the sea? Would air magically appear in his brain? It was quite hard to grasp how the power worked. I put a ‘keep thinking’ post-it on the question I thought of and kept reading.
“Personality is… Necrophobia.”
Fear of death.
“I was wondering for quite a while, but… Personalities don’t really matter, does it?”
The saint shot a question back at me.
“Why do you think that?”
“Because of you, of course. You say you’re opposed to violence, and your personality is Ahimsa at that, and yet you always hit me.”
The saint rolled to look at me.
“It’s not violence, it’s an act of love.”
“For real?”
“I’m always honest. Each of my blows are filled with love.”
“…We’ll talk about that later. In any case, this just ends up making even less sense? A Warrior is afraid of death? How did he become one in the first place?”
Having necrophobia doesn’t make someone a coward, but it doesn’t mean something completely different either.
“How can one fight monsters if he’s afraid of death?”
She isn’t going to say that love and courage overcomes everything, is she?
“Mm… What you’re talking about makes sense, but…”
The saint sat up.
“Humans aren’t that simple, you know? If fearing death is your fate, will you just live that way? No, you’ll find a way to overcome it. That’s what a human is, after all.”
Does the saint not see me as a monster?
“I think because he didn’t get too influenced by his personality and power, because he always stayed positive and motivated, he managed to get this far.”
‘Getting over one’s personality’… Would I perhaps be able to become a benevolent person in the future then? This was a joke.
“Of course, there are times when one gets overtaken by their personalities at times. This is especially the case for those who attained their powers. Mr. Smith just managed to take his immense willpower, love, and courage to overcome his fear of death.”
Love and courage. And here I almost thought it wouldn’t appear again…
“He got over his fear, and if he doesn’t die, I really don’t know how to deal with him.”
“Don’t give up. Powerful abilities come with high costs. This is an old saying passed down from the ancient times. Seeing how powerful [Memento Mori] is, the cost for it must be…”
The saint closed her mouth. Cost… Heart of Gold required money as its cost. Memento Mori must demand something for the services it renders the user as well. Either an advance payment, or a deferred payment. Right. Let’s stop with the personality for now. Time to move onto stats.
3200 for health. He’d die after being stabbed by a sword about 320 times. Well, this would only be the case when his health regen and defense stats were all at zero.
“……”
Again, I was faced with a question. What was health points, according to the Oracle? Humans die when their necks get cut off. Real life didn’t work like video games. Was it based on one’s tenacity to life? Possible. For example, if the saint lost all the blood in her body, and still had HP left, would she stay alive?
…No way.
Based on my experiences so far, HP only served to work as a warning. It didn’t work like HP bars from video games. It just shows how hard it is to kill a living being. Perhaps there can be situations where it would be possible to kill a being without making its HP go down at all? I looked down and took a look at the Warrior’s defense and magic resistance points.
“150 for defense and 100 for magic resistance…”
The saint chipped in after hearing my mutters.
“The Warrior didn’t even get a scratch from a dragon’s breath when he was wearing the Hirganrel. No matter what you do, Mr. Murderer, you shouldn’t be able to injure the Warrior.”
The saint seemed to think that I would fail. I don’t really know why though.
“…Hold on, I need to see a fairy.”
When I tried to leave for a second, the saint grinned.
“Bathroom?”
“Smoke.”
“Smoking can lead to lung can…”
“Shut up.”
I got out of the room and bit down on my e-cigarette. How can I kill the Warrior? His defense points were unreasonably high, and his body was immune to death.
As I thought, the way to kill him would just come down to…
After thinking for about ten minutes, I went back into the room. The saint was sitting next to a table at the far left side of the room. Snack time again? The tea she was drinking smelled quite strange. Bitter? Almost smelled like medicine, but…
“Can I have a cu…”
Before I could even finish, the teacup in her hand disappeared.
“Hahaha! This is really expensive, so it probably won’t suit your cheap mouth. Understand?”
This girl… What was she hiding?
“Cheapskate.”
She probably won’t tell me anything if I tried to dig deeper…
Let’s just ignore her for now.
There are more important matters to work on.
I took a look at the Warrior’s abilities next.
Dragon Blood, Imagine Citadel, Zenith Crown.
[Dragon Blood] – Immunity from sword wounds. It’s a temporary ability that can be gained by bathing in a dragon’s blood. It can block a sword strike from a normal soldier, but any more than that would result in an injury.
It’s said that the ability’s strength dissipates with time, so this was more of a needless title for the Warrior at this point. Next is…
[Imagine Citadel] – Magic that allows one to create a massive protective barrier in the name of god. The defensive capability of this barrier is as strong as the average castle’s.
A miracle that the Warrior can perform once a day. So it’s possible to cast magic without mana if you’re loved by god… How convenient. The last one, Zenith Crown, was a highest class of white magic that protected one from mental attacks. If a person like the Warrior went under the influence of a mental attack, there would surely be a lot of trouble.
So he ended up getting protection against powerful mental attacks as well. The biggest issue I’m going to be faced with is his power. The second biggest issue would be his experience in battle. He should’ve experienced pretty much every form of battle by now. According to the report, it’s said that he’s very meticulous and alert… The reason why a person like him would appear in a town out in the open is… overconfidence in his power, perhaps? It was most likely that.
It should be hard to try to take advantage of that to kill him, though. As someone who fears death, he should have several methods to take him out of critical situations. I had to kill someone like that. In battle, it is said that he uses spellstones to attain blessings, so the top priority for me would be to nullify his magic capabilities. Well, since we already have a plan for this one, I shouldn’t think too deeply about it… The people in this world weren’t stupid. They approved the plans that were presented to them because they were certain that it would work. Perhaps I wouldn’t even have to appear in the battle… After confirming all of his items as well, I tried looking into the Warrior’s main weapon, the Sword Monster.
[Mouthless monster = Sword Monster] – Rank: A
– A pair of swords created from the Crimson Comet. Because the hilt and the blade are both one piece, it is impossible to break the hilt or try to separate it from the blade. The name “Sword Monster” was given by [Romeo Smith]. This sword is alive and continuously spews out curses and screams towards its user, causing the users to sometimes turn completely insane. It used to be a B+ ranked weapon, but turned into an A ranked weapon after slaying Mirage Belt.
– <The Crimson King> A black magic that can be applied to a monster. Any blood that is comsumed by the user is sacrificed to god, and 10% of this blood can be returned in whatever blood type the user desires. It is possible to dope oneself in excess blood to gain physical enhancement.
– <Sinful Crimes> An extra ability given on top of The Crimson King. This sword attained a corruption element after slaying countless monsters in the world. Anything cut by this sword would attain a poison, rot, paralysis, sleep, burn, freeze, bleed, fatigue, slow, curse, etc. side effects from it.
– <Tyrannical Murderer> Attained after slaying [Mirage Belt]. Any time the sword is swung, the world becomes slightly injured, causing the mana in the area to begin boiling. Most magic spells, therefor, can be dispelled just by a swing of the sword.
How disgusting. You might as well just have written down ‘It’s a cheat’ as the description.
“Sword Monster… He uses two…?”
“Surprised? It might seem amazing to you, but it really isn’t much of a weapon, at least to me and Necro. It’s just described fancily.”
I asked a question at her.
“…Not a good weapon?”
“Sword Monster really is just suited for defense. It’s just sturdy.”
I could kind of understand. The saint was quite overpowered as well. She was the strongest white wizard in the world. To her, Sword Monster was just a sturdy weapon.
“How strong would a weapon with high attack points be then?”
“Well…”
After thinking for a bit, the saint brightened.
“It should be able to destroy a star in one hit?”
“……”
Star destroyer? That’s a thing? It was way more powerful than what I had imagined.
“You’re joking, right?”
The scale was a little too big to grasp.
“It might be hard for you to grasp it, but it’s true. The weapon I just described is the strongest weapon in this world… Of course, there might be stronger weapons than [Another Fact] that haven’t been revealed to us yet, but for now, this is the strongest one we have in public record.”
Another Fact. An artifact from a different world.
“Could that be the hero’s sword…?”
The saint nodded vigorously.
“Correct~!”
…Perhaps now’s a good time to pack up and leave.